Harry Potter and the Awkward Date
by wittylibrarian
Summary: Harry's summer becomes more dangerous than ever as Voldemort begins his second war. And wouldn't you know it, Harry's talked himself into going on a date with a fellow Hogwarts student as the chaos intensifies! FINIS! R&R please!
1. Chapter One: The Seven Lock Box

Harry Potter and the Awkward Date  
  
STORY DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction. All characters, story lines, background elements, fancy cars and jewelry, unmarked bills in twenties and fifties, and additional extraneous items appearing in this story belong to J.K. Rowling, her publishers, and her solicitors. The writer of this story is not making any money off this, I'm not even making any money off the stuff I've got published on my own. I am poor so any attempt to sue me will be costly and futile. So there.  
  
Chapter One: The Seven Lock Box  
  
Summer mornings usually don't start with rain pattering on the windows, but this morning did. It stirred the young, shaggy haired youth from his cramped bed, kicking away the rumpled sweat-soaked sheets before he tipped himself over onto the floor. Groaning, the boy stretched himself up onto his feet, attempting a great yawn but ending up with a slight hiccup noise instead. After tapping an empty birdcage near the window he looked out past the watery splashes against the glass to take a good look at Privet Drive, the road that passed his uncle Vernon's house.  
  
Harry Potter blinked, forgetting once again his glasses, and slipped them on before taking another look down the street. He spotted Mrs. Figg's umbrella in the distance, taking another early morning walk even in this bad weather. If there were any other watchers keeping an eye out, Harry couldn't see them but he was sure they had to be there.  
  
It had been a week since he had returned from his wizarding school of Hogwarts, another year of learning and another year of danger passed away. Harry already hated being back, not because of the dreadful way Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia treat him nearly every minute, but because once again he had been cooped up in this place, this room, waiting for any word or sign that it would be safe for someone like him to even take a walk in the rain.  
  
Harry Potter was a more unusual boy than most, in fact unique in any world. He was rare enough in the world of normal people (Muggles as they were known) for being a wizard, capable of casting spells and jinxes and what have you with a wave of a specially crafted wand. But even in the wizarding world he was special, and it had a lot to do with that lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, the one left there by a Dark Lord wizard who had cheated death and was eagerly waiting to deal out death to anyone, Wizard or Muggle, who got in his way.  
  
Thankfully Harry noted that scar wasn't hurting this morning nor any of the previous mornings since his return to 4 Privet Drive. Usually when the scar hurt it meant Lord Voldemort, the most deadly Dark Wizard in ages, was dishing out punishment to his followers, self-styled Death Eaters, or to any poor unsuspecting soul who got ensnared in any of his traps. Thankfully, most of the Death Eaters, especially Lucius Malfoy, had been recently captured during a nasty confrontation with Aurors and special members of the Order of the Phoenix at the Ministry of Magic; so Voldemort had too few followers to torment over such a grand failure. The lack of pain also meant the Dark Lord (whom everyone else wanted to call 'You-Know-Who' as though saying his name might summon him or bring some other misfortune) hadn't yet tempted or tortured anyone into serving his cause, which he may undoubtedly do once he schemes a new plot to destroy his enemies.  
  
Harry sat back down on the bed, sighing and taking a moment to not think. Instead that was all he could do. He thought about the letters he sent with his pet owl Hedwig to Headmaster Dumbledore, to his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, and to Remus Lupin, the last surviving true friend of Harry's deceased father. He had sent requests to Ron and Hermione to see if they could visit him somehow or at best keep in better communication with him than the last summer he was stuck here. He had sent letters to Dumbledore and Lupin, as they were members of the Order of the Phoenix, to see if it was possible somehow to leave the safety of Uncle Vernon's house, which had fallen under a magic protection thanks to Aunt Petunia's (reluctant, no doubt) accepting to take Harry in just after his parents' tragic deaths at Voldemort's hands.  
  
He started banging his head gently against the wall he was leaning against, bored, frustrated, and burdened. The boredom and frustration, he was used to that, but the burden, well it had been there before but never this heavy on his mind...  
  
"NO BANGING!" yelled a deep, rumbling volcanic voice from downstairs. His Uncle Vernon was already up, apparently, this being a workday and him rushing off to his job at Grunnings that meant shouting at subordinates and threatening buyers owing payments. Harry stopped, simply leaning his head against the wall. A part of Harry's mind whispered, oh go ahead and keep banging against the wall, go ahead, anger him up, get into a yelling match with your uncle like you always do...  
  
"I'm tired," Harry whispered to himself. "I'm tired of fighting. I don't care anymore."  
  
Your loss, whispered the voice, you could at least feel angry because at least you'll feel SOMETHING...  
  
Harry sighed and thought about slipping back under the bedsheet still dangling precariously off the side of the mattress. He reached out to pull it back over him when there was a startled screech by his aunt, a clattering of fallen chinaware, and an unwanted "What the bloody!" by his uncle.  
  
Harry sat there for a few moments, realizing something had happened, most likely an owl post just arriving. Uncle Vernon didn't care much for owls. To him, they brought only bad news and bad reminders that he had a nasty, unwanted bit of wizardry under his roof. Harry noticed the thundering footsteps coming up the stairs to the living quarters of the house, and waited for the bedroom door to be slammed open to reveal a mustached, oversized bull of a human glaring at him.  
  
"Downstairs," growled Uncle Vernon. "NOW."  
  
Wrapping the bedsheet about him, Harry wordlessly entered the hallway and headed down the stairs. He picked up the deep snoring sound of cousin Dudley, so he was at least thankful that he wouldn't be present to add to Harry's long-awaited chewing out. He had never gone this long without Vernon complaining about him in some fashion or another, so Dudley apparently fell out of habit of waiting for such moments.  
  
When Harry made it to Aunt Petunia's usually immaculate kitchen, he quickly noticed why the adults were startled: it had to be the largest owl Harry had ever seen standing on the table. Hedwig may have been impressive in size, but this one had to be a head taller with twice the wingspan. Harry could also see why such a large bird would be making a delivery: the owl stood impressively upon a large wooden box covered with about seven thick metal locks.  
  
Harry took a seat facing the owl, opposite from his aunt, who either disapproved of her nephew coming down dressed shabbily in a bedsheet or disapproved of yet another shock for the day. Something like this was bound to cut into her spying on the neighbors, especially since the Greetlebucks down the street were currently repainting their interiors and had their curtains down for the coming weekend.  
  
"Well?" Uncle Vernon finally asked, once his neck had deflated down to where his voice could work properly.  
  
"Well, it's a parcel, isn't it?" Harry answered quietly, wondering what it might be.  
  
"I bloody well know it's a parcel! I would wish those, those people of yours would at least use the regular means of delivery!"  
  
Harry smiled a bit, the most he had done in days. "They tried that once, you weren't too thrilled with that either."  
  
Vernon could very well shout loud enough for the Greetlebucks to deal with shattered windows at that moment, but he controlled himself. He wasn't about to let the whole world know the kind of embarrassment he had brought upon his family. He took a breath, and then stated his commands. "Well, then, open the box and get rid of the bloody bird why don't you?"  
  
As if the owl understood him, the bird calmly lifted one leg at Harry and hooted. He spotted the scroll draped above the claw and quickly removed the note. When he saw the owl keeping its foot up, Harry took a moment, puzzled. Then he remembered, some owls do this for a living. "If it's payment you want, I don't have any wizard money on me now, but I do have some of Hedwig's food if you can accept it."  
  
The owl hooted pleasantly at that.  
  
"All right then. In my bedroom upstairs. The door should be open."  
  
The owl nodded, spread its wings and flapped hard, lifting itself up and gliding remarkably gracefully around the living room, building up momentum to swing itself up the staircase. Harry heard some fluttering noises, then a quick loud yell from someone being horrifically woken by a large bird. "No, no," Harry shouted in the direction of upstairs. "The other door."  
  
Aunt Petunia looked like she could faint, but instead stood quickly and rushed up the stairs to check on her darling son. Vernon glared viciously at Harry, rethinking his policy on loud yelling at this point.  
  
Harry knew not to stare back at his uncle when he got into one of those moods, and quickly returned his attention to the note. He unfolded the paper and glanced at the writing.  
  
YOU KNOW HOW TO OPEN IT. JUST SAY THE MAGIC WORDS. AM  
  
AM. Alastor Moody, Harry nodded to himself. He had sent a box, and fearing like always it could be intercepted by Voldemort's Death Eaters, he was setting up precautions so that only Harry could open it. Magic words, he hummed for a moment. "All right," he finally muttered before bringing his voice up to normal levels. "Constant Vigilance!"  
  
Vernon stared incredulously at his nephew, then at the box that didn't open.  
  
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Harry tried yelling, much in the way that the false Mad-Eye did two years earlier, hoping that was a common phrase in Moody's workings.  
  
"Mad," Vernon muttered as the box remained closed. "The whole lot of you."  
  
Harry seemed puzzled. He thought back, to when he met the real Mad-Eye nearly a year ago in this house. "Elementary wand safety! Eye in a glass! Oddment! Tweek! Oh, why couldn't you like candy the way Dumbledore does?" He was getting desperate at that point.  
  
"Would you prefer I get the fireaxe and open it properly?" Vernon said in a sarcastically sweet voice, noting full and complete insanity in his nephew's ravings.  
  
"Oh, no," Harry closed his eyes, realizing what the words might be. "Blown buttock?"  
  
Before Uncle Vernon could grab the box and take it to the aforementioned fireaxe for disposal, a loud CLICK was heard and a lockbolt on the front of the box slid to the right. Harry pushed at the lid, and to his delight lifted it open to find...  
  
"Why couldn't this madman friend of yours send you this note on the bloody owl's leg in the first place?" Vernon growled as Harry picked up a second piece of paper. It read:  
  
IT WAS TONKS IDEA. THINKS RIDDLE'S CROWD WOULD NEVER THINK I WOULD STOOP SO LOW TO SAY IT. SPEAKING OF TONKS, NEXT LOCK IS HERS. AM  
  
Harry sighed, knowing this one already. He closed the lid down and said the next magic word. "Wotcher!"  
  
There was a slight clicking noise but that was it. He repeated the sigh and tried again. "Wotcher, Harry!"  
  
A second lockbolt, this time on the right side of the box from Harry, slid open. Harry lifted the lid and found a block of chocolate atop a third note. It read:  
  
HELLO HARRY. THIS ONE'S MINE. RL  
  
Harry recognized the handwriting right away: Lupin, his favorite Dark Arts teacher and last surviving true friend of Harry's parents. Harry shut the box closed and stated, "Moony."  
  
The box stayed shut. Too obvious, Harry thought. If Voldemort's remaining Death Eaters, the ones not caught at the Ministry less than a month ago, had intercepted the box then Wormtail would know it. Harry shouted "Expecto Patronum!" That didn't do anything so he thought on it a little more. "Riddikulus!"  
  
CLICK. He couldn't see the lockbolt but it had to be on the other side of the box. Harry lifted the lid to find the next clue.  
  
It wasn't so much a clue as it was a wooly knitted green hat with gold and maroon stripes along the rim, perfectly useless in summertime but clearly meant for future use. A note fell out as he picked it up, reading:  
  
HELLO, HARRY. OH, WHO CARES ABOUT SECRET WORDS, IF THEY'VE GOTTEN THIS FAR IN BREAKING INTO IT WHY BOTHER? HARRY, JUST SAY 'OPEN'. OH, AND I DO HOPE YOU LIKE THE HAT. MRS. WEASLEY.  
  
Harry giggled a bit, noting the hat would have been a dead giveaway that this was Ron's mother. With a smile still on his face he once again closed the box and then muttered, "Open."  
  
CLICK. "Finally," Vernon muttered as well, "One of them showed some reason to it."  
  
He picked up a handful of Daily Prophet newspapers, topped off by a small note written in familiar handwriting. It read:  
  
AH, WELL THAT'S THE MISSUS FOR YOU. SENSIBLE REALLY, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. I'VE SENT ALONG SOME WORD, RON MENTIONED YOU FELT OUT OF THE LOOP LAST SUMMER. NEXT WORD TO UNLOCK SHOULD BE EASY TO GUESS, KNOWING ME. BAD HABITS AND ALL THAT. A. WEASLEY.  
  
Harry chuckled as he closed the lid. "Plugs."  
  
Nothing happened, so he took another moment to think it over. "Fellytone."  
  
CLICK. Harry lifted the lid again, finding just a simple note reading:  
  
ME AGAIN. CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY'RE SENDING YOU ALL THIS USELESS STUFF. NEED MORE PROTECTIVE DEVICES IF YOU ASK ME. I'M NOT ABOUT TO SEND YOU ANY OF MINE THOUGH. JUST TO MAKE SURE THOSE SCUMMY DEATH EATERS DON'T TAKE ANY OF MINE. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND. LAST ONE IS DUMBLEDORE. CAREFUL WITH IT. AM  
  
Harry closed the lid one more time. Having a pretty good idea what it was, he said, "Lemon drop!"  
  
Nothing happened. He sighed, thinking on it some more. "Oh, that's it."  
  
"What's that?" Vernon asked, and suddenly made a face realizing he had gotten drawn into this madness in his kitchen.  
  
"Warm socks," Harry stated, and waited with a big grin on his face as the last CLICK sounded on the last lockbolt. He turned and lifted the lid, reaching in to pull out an oddly shaped metal plate, not so much circular or rectangular or any other kind of polygonal shape that Harry could identify. If he tried identifying the shape he realized the metal had shifted into another nearly similar shape. At least he think it changed. And yet even held in his hands it didn't feel like it was moving or changing in any way.  
  
He double-checked the box and spotted a good-sized parchment folded twice. Pulling it out, he unfolded it and read:  
  
DEAR HARRY, I UNDERSTAND YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT BEING STUCK IN ONE PLACE, WITH THE WHOLE WORLD ABOUT YOU MOVING AND THINGS TO BE DONE. I HAVE THOUGHT HARD REGARDING OUR LAST DISCUSSION AND I REALIZE THE NECESSITY OF GIVING YOU SOME FREEDOM, WHILE STILL ENSURING YOUR PROTECTION. WE HAVE DONE SOME WORK, AND WITH A LOT OF EFFORT I MIGHT ADD, ON THIS AMULET OF SORTS HOPEFULLY NOW IN YOUR HANDS. IT, ALONG WITH THE WORDS ON THIS PARCHMENT, IS MEANT FOR YOU ALONE. AS LONG AS YOU WEAR THIS TALISMAN, CHARMED MUCH LIKE THE UNPLOTTABLE SPELLS PLACED ON HOGWARTS, AS WELL AS BEARING FORMS OF PROTECTION AGAINST PARALYSING SPELLS, YOU WILL HAVE SOME SAFETY. MINISTER FUDGE AND HIS OFFICES HAVE BEEN APPRAISED OF THIS AND THE USE OF THIS MAGICAL DEVICE WILL NOT REFLECT UPON YOUR REMAINING A STUDENT AT HOGWARTS. PLEASE REMEMBER TO AVOID DIRECTLY USING YOUR WAND AMONG THE POPULACE, AND IF CONFRONTED FLEE AS BEST YOU CAN. ANY FOLLOWER OF VOLDEMORT FOOLISH ENOUGH TO ATTACK YOU IN PUBLIC WILL BE CAUGHT BY AURORS NOW WAITING TO ACT UPON THE SLIGHTEST SIGN. I ASSURE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY THERE THAT YOU WILL REMAIN SAFE.  
  
P.S. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU'VE GOTTEN EVERYTHING OUT OF THE BOX. YOU CAN OPEN IT ONE LAST TIME BEFORE CLOSING IT FOR GOOD.  
  
SIGNED, A. DUMBLEDORE (with additional titles and whatnot)  
  
Harry smiled at the flourish, or lack of it, at the end of Dumbledore's name: the headmaster of Hogwarts had never really cared for titles, and for some reason Harry found that a comforting thought. He glanced again at the plate, noting it looked like twenty layers of triangles atop one another before shifting immediately, before checking that the box lid had been closed before lifting it open again. He took a good long look inside, felt about with one hand to check the dark corners of the interior, and satisfied it was empty he proceeded to close the box for what seemed to be the last time.  
  
Which it was. The box immediately changed, practically exploding into a bouquet of flowers resting within a rather nicely formed crystal vase. In the midst of the flowers Harry spotted a small card that read "With thanks to the Dursleys for watching Harry Potter. Signed, A. Dumbledore."  
  
Harry turned to the sudden thudding sound behind him, noting that the shock of witnessing the transformation had knocked Uncle Vernon back against the wall. "Blast it," he gasped, acting as though he was suffering a heart attack. "I hate it. Your kind, I swear your kind has no right to do that sort of thing!"  
  
Harry suddenly felt the need to defend Dumbledore, not even realizing he was starting a yelling match with his uncle. "He was being nice to you! Why can't you ever see that in other people? Especially him!"  
  
Vernon raised his finger, preparing to give his nephew a five-hour lecture on how and why wizards are the worst sort of people, and to hell with going to work now, this needed to be said. Thankfully for all concerned, Aunt Petunia had rushed into the room, having heard her husband's falling against the wall, poor scared Dudley in tow behind her, when she spotted the vase now decorating her kitchen. "What happened? Flowers?"  
  
"No!" gasped Uncle Vernon. "Your nephew's ruddy useless mad friends!"  
  
Having dealt for years with pig tails on her son, and floating cakes and a ballooning sister-in-law, not to mention an exploding artificial fireplace, as well as confronting the very existence of Dementors hurting Dudley, Petunia actually seemed quite pleased to see something this nice from a wizard for a change. That was until she saw her husband's perplexed look on his face wondering just whose bloody side of the argument she was on. She quickly turned at Harry with a scolding, angered look. "And now I suppose all your freakish friends are going to fill up my house and home with filthy useless plants! We don't need that sort of thing piling up in here like junk!" 


	2. Chapter Two: The Latitalisman

Chapter Two: The Latitalisman  
  
Harry hurried back upstairs with the papers, hat, chocolate and talisman, not waiting to see Uncle Vernon hurry out to his car carrying the unwanted vase to the outside trash bins before leaving to work. Breakfast could wait at this moment, especially as he needed to figure out a few things before...well, before testing the talisman.  
  
The delivery owl was waiting calmly near Hedwig's cage, taking a few more pecks at the feed. "Everything alright?" Harry whispered to it.  
  
The owl hooted and resumed eating. Harry glanced back at the bedroom door and reached out to close it. Turning back to the owl he whispered, "Hold on a minute."  
  
He went to the floorboard under which he hid much of his magical inventory, and where he hid his birthday supplies during the Dudley Summer Diet Project. Lifting up the board, he shuffled about a few of his things before finding his coin purse. "Here we go."  
  
Harry lied about not having wizard money, simply knowing his relatives. If he announced at the kitchen table he could pay for owl shipments, Uncle Vernon was bound to insist on rent and meals being paid as well. Although, he quickly thought to himself, how would they exchange Galleons and Knuts for Muggle currency? The only bank he knew that could do it was Gringotts, and his aunt and uncle wouldn't even know where to find a branch office.  
  
Forget that, Harry groaned to himself, I don't know where a branch office is.  
  
Harry quietly pulled out a handful of coins and offered it to the owl. "Here. I can pay you."  
  
The owl stopped eating and glanced over the pile of coins. The bird fished out a pair of Galleons and five Knuts using one claw, drawing each coin in turn into his feathers, perhaps to some storage pocket for coins. Harry couldn't entirely see where the coin pouch could be stored, but it made sense that the owl would have somewhere to carry loose change.  
  
Once that was taken care of, the owl hopped over to the window and tapped on it. Harry obliged by opening the pane, and the bird hooted once before spreading its great wings and flapping out into the misty air. The rains had slowed up into a slight drizzle, which felt good along Harry's arms holding the window open. He watched the owl soar over the roof of the next door neighbors before closing up and turning his attention back to the talisman now lying on his bed.  
  
It took a few minutes before Harry realized how he might be able to use it while going about during the day. He dressed, finding new clothes to wear under the bed comforter piled onto the floor. Spotting his belt, he checked the buckle on it and removed it. He reached over to the talisman and flipped it about, looking for any hook or bar that could secure it to his belt. Satisfied, he locked the buckle into place and slid it through the loops on his jeans. He noticed that the shifting appearance of the talisman stopped once he tied the belt into place, so it now seemed like a normal piece of clothing.  
  
Harry double-checked his money purse, counting out the large number of Galleons in his head. While the coins were worthless out in the real world, all he needed to do was get it exchanged. But that meant finding a goblins' bank somewhere. At least he knew someone who could tell him.  
  
Harry hurried down the stairs, heading straight for the front door, hoping at last to get some fresh air in the morning after being stuck indoors this past week. Plans, at last, to see about...  
  
"HARRY POTTER! GET BACK IN HERE!"  
  
He stopped, slumping his shoulders, and shuffled toward the direction of the kitchen. Aunt Petunia gave him a rather stern and unforgiving stare, much like every other stare she had ever offered him. "I was under the assumption you were not supposed to go outdoors."  
  
"Well," Harry stammered, glancing at Dudley who was finishing off a full grapefruit while glaring ruefully back at him. "That's what this talisman, the one I just got in the parcel, it's supposed to protect me and all..."  
  
"Enough." Aunt Petunia took a sip of her now-cold morning tea, still glaring at him over the rim of the cup. "And what about your chores?"  
  
Dudley started chortling, but choked on a bit of grapefruit in his mouth, and had to cough it loose.  
  
Petunia stood from the table, glaring right at her good-for-nothing nephew. "If you are indeed prepared to go outside, might as well make the most of it..."  
  
Harry had learned a few honest-to-goodness curses over the past five years, and yet sadly he was stuck with the ineffective Muggle curse words to mutter while trimming the overgrown hedges surrounding the side of the Dursley abode.  
  
It had been two hours of doing solid yardwork about 4 Privet Drive, and Harry knew it in his heart that another solid hour of it and he would be begging for a Dementor attack as a kind of relief. If the talisman buckle was working, he couldn't tell. Then again, he wondered why anyone hunting him down simply didn't get a street map and drive by with Muggle military firepower.  
  
"No style to it," he figured, and he snipped another shrubbery branch. Another interesting thought crept into his head, about carving out a rather rude hand gesture with the shrubbery to shock the neighbors, but shook it loose from his mind. He didn't trust his artistic sensibilities to be accurate enough.  
  
Not that Aunt Petunia or Dudley would be around to watch him in progress. With Harry no longer making an excuse to hide indoors protected from Voldemort's forces, they had left him with all the outdoor house chores scheduled for the week and left more than an hour earlier to do some shopping. Petunia had some intriguing ideas about re-painting the exterior and so wanted to check the paint stores, while Dudley had heard about a new set of Playstation games that set new standards for blood, gore and explosions.  
  
"Don't worry," Dudley growled as he and Aunt Petunia walked off to the bus stop a few blocks down, "I'll be sure Mum gets a good sized brush with your name on it."  
  
Snip. Harry re-thought that idea of carving that rude hand gesture into the shrubs.  
  
CRACK.  
  
Harry stopped. That was someone Apparating near the house. Could it be the Dementors back for more? Could it be a Death Eater, having at last gotten a map from the local chemist's to find his sanctuary? Could it be Lord Voldemort himself, come for the final conflict?  
  
Harry didn't feel cold so no Dementor, and his head felt fine so no Voldemort either. That left a Death Eater. Harry felt the sweat dropping from his forehead, heard the pounding at the front door, the constant pounding at the door, and they were coming, they were here at last...  
  
"Mad Dog Pizza," shouted a familiar voice. "We deliver."  
  
"Tonks?" Harry poked his head around the corner of the garage, and stepped across the driveway toward the door. "Tonks! Over here!"  
  
"What?" A young woman with short spiked purple hair stepped back from the front door and smiled at Harry. "Wotcher, mate. I thought you were inside. I guess you're trying out your Latitalisman then. Working alright?"  
  
"I suppose, I can't really tell. Can you?"  
  
Tonks glanced about, then leaned in, pulling a small, reflective mirror from her pocket. "It's a smaller version of those Foe Glasses you mighta heard about. Moody's insisting we carry all these devices when we're on our shifts. I can spot anybody with this, can tell you the basic head count too. It can really spot a wizard from, well, half the distance between here and London I think."  
  
"Who's it spotting then?" Harry tried glancing at the mirrored surface, spotting a flurry of movement along its surface. It seemed like a shinier, smaller version of his Marauder's Map.  
  
Tonks grinned at him. "I've got forty thousand or so Muggles on here right now, and about twenty-three wizard types, myself included." She tapped the mirror at the center, and the small dots bouncing about at that part of the surface enlarged. "Here we are, zooming in. And there I am right there." A single dot loomed large in the middle of the glass, with the words THERE YOU ARE to the left of it.  
  
"So it's working."  
  
"Let's zoom back a bit." She tapped the side of the glass twice, and the dot in the center zoomed slightly smaller, so that more dots emerged along the edges. "Here's Figg. Ooh, here's someone nice, call it a visit, but still. Ah, here we go. Look at that, then."  
  
Harry glanced at the mirror. A smallish dot blinked in, and then blinked out at one corner. The dot blinked quickly at another corner. Then it blinked in the middle of the map, then along the left edge, then the top edge, and then didn't appear for a few seconds before blinking once more in another spot.  
  
"That's the Latitalisman for ya," Tonks grinned again. "Anyone mapping this place can't make a clean lock on you. If they try to Apparate without knowing a specific lock-in spot, they'll find themselves stuck in the middle of a wall or tree."  
  
"Can't they just lock on to an actual location? A street address?"  
  
Tonks kept grinning. "Apparating works not just by figuring location but especially by person. When you Apparate it's because you're going to meet someONE, not at somePLACE. Your friends, Fred and George, betcha last year when they passed their tests on it, kept Apparating right next to people, didn't they?"  
  
Harry remembered the times the twins kept squeezing their landings almost on top of their younger brother Ron and nodded.  
  
"Yeah, they were focusing too hard. Always do your first year or so of doing it. I Apparated here by locking in on Figg down the street, measuring out the right distance and all. I don't think any of the bad sort will know to do that."   
  
Harry smiled at her. "Then it is working, great. I guess it's your shift then watching over me?"  
  
"Yeah. I spotted your aunt and cousin going off, figured you were here by yerself." Tonks nodded at the clippers in Harry's hands. "What's this then? Doing some Herbology? I didn't know Professor Sprout assigned summer homework."  
  
"No, it's called yardwork." Harry wiped his forehead against his sleeve. "Earning my keep, if you can call it that."  
  
"Wow." Tonks stopped grinning. "And you can't use magic to speed it up. Pity."  
  
"Yeah, well, not supposed to use magic. Not even sure I'd be right doing it when I get old enough to be allowed."  
  
"Oh, why not? Everyone does it." She got a wicked grin on her face. "Here then, I'll do it. I'm allowed."  
  
"Really?" Harry stood there, gaping at her, wondering why anyone would want to do yardwork. "Well, that's great! I mean, that's...wrong. Tonks, we're in the open. People will see you doing it."  
  
"Not if I'm quick."  
  
Harry frowned. "They'll still see you doing it, though. And my aunt, like it or not, has got friends about here. At least I think they're friends, they stop by for tea parties and such. They'll snitch."  
  
"Snitch?" Tonks looked confused. "What snitch? Muggles don't know about Quidditch."  
  
"Ah, not that." Harry rolled his eyes. "Snitch is a Muggle word too. It means they'll blab about it."  
  
"Oh." Tonks nodded. "Fine then. Let's go inside."  
  
Harry shrugged, and led her through the front door into the foyer. Tonks took the door handle and closed it herself. "All right, nobody else is here," she whispered.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Okay then." She kept her back to Harry, rubbing her hair a bit, letting the purple color go dark. "Give me a minute..."  
  
Harry took a step up on the stairs, trying to glance over her shoulders. "What's going on?"  
  
It took another minute before Tonks turned around to show Harry what she had done. Using her talents as a Metamorphmagus, her nose had changed, as well as her chin, her cheeks, her eye color. The hair had gone dark and now appeared utterly messy and unmanageable, especially sticking out in back. And then there was that scar that appeared on her forehead. The only thing missing would be a set of round eyeglasses, otherwise she looked exactly like Harry Potter.  
  
The glasses-less Harry winked back at the real thing. "Wotcher, Harry."  
  
"Wow." He took a moment to look at him...her. The detail seemed so spot on. He moved in for a closer look, getting up close, almost nose to nose, and still couldn't see much of a difference. "This is... Are you exactly like me now?"  
  
"Hold on." Tonks pulled at her/his pants and glanced down. "Well, damn." She/he snapped them back in place. "Almost got it."  
  
The Real Harry gave her/him a look.  
  
"Well, anyway, Harry, all I need now is a set of your clothes, and hopefully you've got an extra pair of those wire rims on your nose." Tonks waved upward, pointing to the second floor. "Get a move on, I've got work to do!"  
  
"Alright alright alright alright," Harry smirked, hurrying up the stairs. He hurried into his bedroom, grabbing a clean shirt and pants that matched closely to what now stuck with sweat against his body. He tossed the clothes at Tonks, who stood close by, before thinking a moment to grab some more clean clothes under the bedsheet still crumpled on the floor. He pointed quietly toward the bathroom, hurrying inside and quickly turning on the sink faucet while pulling at the dirty smelly outfit.  
  
"Alright if I get some measurements, Harry, just to make sure?" Tonks joked through the half-open doorway.  
  
Harry gave her/him another look before closing the door completely. He finished undressing, found a washcloth and dumped it into the filling basin. He let it get soaked, before shutting off the water, grabbing a bar of soap with one hand and the wet cloth with the other, getting prepared to wash off some of the sweat and smell.  
  
He finished toweling off, and hurried with the clean clothes, re-securing the Latitalisman belt around the new set of pants. Grabbing up the dirty clothes at his feet, Harry stumbled out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, where Tonks had already changed clothes and had located Harry's extra set of eyewear. She/he stood and gave Harry a smirk he recognized from the occasional mirror reflection he had seen all his life.  
  
Harry took a minute to give Tonks a full look-at. It was impressive being able to see an exact duplicate of yourself staring back at you. Harry wondered for a moment if the Weasley twins Fred and George ever gave it any thought. But then, he supposed, they had lived their whole lives like that, so there wasn't any shock at all for them...  
  
"Alright, you look good enough to go and waste money at the arcade now, mate," Tonks smirked, and Harry quickly noticed the one thing that didn't match: the voice.  
  
"Tonks," Harry noted, pointing at his throat, "the voice. Our voices, we don't match do we?"  
  
"Oh." Tonks' Harry-mask face scrunched a bit. "Gotta work on that. Hmm. Here we go." She/he intentionally dropped the voice an octave. "Arr, me man. Me use manly voice. Hand me a pint, matey, and let's go whistle at some birds passing the corner, ya? Beer and women and song, matey, it's all worth living for."  
  
"I don't talk like that."  
  
"Well, you'd better not. You're only sixteen." Tonks made the Harry face smirk in reply.  
  
"Almost. I need to survive for another two months before then." Harry rolled his eyes. "Let's just try this. Don't talk. Just grunt. The Dursleys know all about grunting."  
  
Tonks grunted a response. Harry grunted back. They continued grunting as they hurried down the stairs back to the front door. Harry paused for a moment. "Tonks?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Thanks for doing this."  
  
Tonks shrugged her/his shoulders. "Hey, it's all in the job description. Right on the vita just under 'Hunting Death Eaters' and just above 'Picking Up Chinese Food Orders.'" He/she opened the door. "Give me a moment, I'll do some lookout, and then, zoom, off you go to the shopping mall."  
  
"How'd you know I wanted to go to the shopping mall?"  
  
"Like I said, you're...almost sixteen, then." Tonks smirked again. "Plus, I heard the Galleons rattling in your pockets."  
  
"Yeah, oh hey," Harry stopped her/him before stepping outside. "Where can I get these exchanged? The shops only take Muggle money. I was going to ask Mrs. Figg, but..."  
  
"Oh, that's easy," Tonks' smirk changed to a full-blown smile. "Goblins have got ATCMs everywhere."  
  
"ATCMs?"  
  
"Available To Change Money spots. Can't miss 'em. Better yet, I know exactly where one is, this mall in Guildford, the Friary, just ask at the Information desk there." Tonks swung the door open wide. "Right then, off we go!"  
  
Tonks-as-Harry raced outside, grabbing the clippers left just off the porch steps, and hollered loudly in a wrongly deep voice, "Oh, yes, yardwork! I love the smell of yardwork in the morning!"  
  
Harry began to think up how many ways this could go horribly wrong, but only got up to seven nightmare scenarios with appropriate adverbs before Tonks whistled out an all-clear for him to go. He checked his back pocket, making sure his wand was there nicely hidden by the back of his loose t-shirt, and scurried outside. He ran, hoping to be as quiet as possible, down along the row of houses well past Mrs. Figg's place, and raced for the bus stop as best he could. 


	3. Chapter Three: Looking for Winodyrs

Chapter Three: Looking for Winodyrs  
  
Harry arrived by bus to the center of Guildford, surrounded by the bustle of urban activity along the sidewalks and the store fronts. Nothing quite like London, of course, but Harry had known enough from his earlier education that few cities in the world were like London in terms of size, population, and action. No, Guildford seemed large enough to Harry, just busy enough to be exciting and small enough to be able to have a good idea which direction you're going.  
  
"Oh, wait," Harry muttered to himself. "Which direction is the Friary?"  
  
He spotted an Information Queue near the bus stop, which contained pamphlets on all the malls and eateries within the city. Embarrassed, he realized the mall was right across the street. He tried to remind himself that this was his first real trip to Guildford, as his aunt and uncle preferred shopping in Woking (where they would take him) or in London proper (where they would take Dudley).  
  
Harry entered the mall, with pockets jingling of Galleons and Sickles and Knuts, looking for the Information booth. He found it on the second floor, with a pair of constantly smiling attendants that didn't notice him standing there for three minutes. Harry understood, after all the two were swamped with American, Japanese and French tourists who kept asking where the bathrooms were.  
  
"May we help you?" smiled the male attendant who finally spotted Harry. His female associate was still trying to translate some Japanese words regarding the need for a mop somewhere.  
  
"Ah, yeah," Harry answered, slightly red around the ears knowing his question might not go over well. "I'm looking for a...an ATCM machine."  
  
The attendant kept smiling, but the eyebrows squinched together in confusion. "You mean an ATM machine, yes?"  
  
"No, uh. It spells out as Available To Change Money. I think."  
  
Harry was suddenly startled by a panel of the booth sliding to the left. He was equally stunned to see a goblin walk calmly out into the mall, right in clear view of every surrounding Muggle. The goblin gave Harry the once-over, then turned to the attendant and rattled a small bell wrapped around the goblin's right wrist. The high-pitched chimes seemed to wash over the attendant's face, who remained smiling but now appeared calm and unconfused. The goblin turned back to Harry. "This way," he said, waving toward the small entranceway in the Information Booth.  
  
Harry had to scrunch down, bending at the knees as he worked his way through the opening. He glanced up as he passed the portal, finding himself in a room slightly larger than Dudley's back on Privet Drive. He tried glancing back out to the mall, to see if he could get a proper sense of dimension to the place, but the faux wood panel had quickly slid back into place when he entered.  
  
Harry glanced about the room. Four desks sat in each of the corners, with large, drip-covered candles sitting all across each desk. A candle-draped chandelier hung low enough to force Harry to lower his head slightly as he followed the goblin to the right-hand back corner. The goblin took a seat, which seemed too low to reach the top of the paper-covered desk, but once on it the chair rose to a proper height, allowing the goblin to grab a quill and dip its tip into blood-red ink. "Name?"  
  
Harry answered quickly. "Potter, Harry. Do you need my vault number?"  
  
"Name will do." The goblin signed the blank roll of parchment in front of him. "Money."  
  
Harry looked perplexed for a moment, then pulled at his pockets, grabbing the pouch of wizarding coins and placing it on the goblin's desk. The goblin gave the boy a rather mean glare, slowly grabbing the small bag and shoving it onto a scale just inside the desk's end shelving. The scale jumped suddenly, hopping its ends quickly as the coins within the pouch rattled. The goblin seemed to count the number of jolts to the scale, writing out the amounts on the parchment until the scale stopped.  
  
"Deposit or exchange?" the goblin stated, not looking at Harry.  
  
"Um, exchange."  
  
The goblin tapped the scale three times. The pouch made rattling noises as though the coins were shifting about. The goblin picked up the pouch and tossed it haphazardly toward Harry, still not looking in his direction. Harry opened the pouch to see the coins had all changed into fives and singles, all brand new. The five pound coins displayed honorifics for the Queen's birthday (with VIVAT REGINA ELIZABETHA along the edges). Given the amount of Galleons he had in the pouch, Harry noted he had ended up with a lot more fivers than he was expecting. He made a mental note to ask Hermione later about exchange rates.  
  
"Withdrawals?" the goblin asked, apparently working through a checklist of bank duties.  
  
"Ah, no," answered Harry, quickly shoving the coins in one pocket and the pouch in another.  
  
The goblin nodded, tapping the ink off of his quill before laying the feather along the desk's topside. The goblin then turned in his chair to face Harry eye-to-eye. "I've seen you."  
  
Harry stood there, stunned, not knowing how to respond. This didn't seem like a bank transaction at the moment.  
  
"You were seen with Ludo Bagman."  
  
Harry's stomach tightened. He remembered hearing how the goblins weren't thrilled with the lack of Ministry support in forcing Bagman to pay his debts.  
  
"Where is Bagman? Where is our gold?"  
  
"I...I don't know," Harry stammered, not wanting to take a step back. "The last I saw him was during the...that Triwizard tournament. Everyone I know, we just know he fled, no one knows where..."  
  
"Where is Bagman? Where is our gold?" The question came harder, nastier this time.  
  
"Look, he owes my mates money too!" Harry shouted back. "He cheated a lot of people out of those bets he made! Why don't you ask Fred and George Weasley! They've got no love for the idiot and they'll definitely tell you I haven't seen the man in more than a year!"  
  
The goblin leaned back, then turned towards his desk and began tapping various drawers along the desktop. Harry suddenly realized he had dragged in the twins on this and was worried he might have done something horribly wrong.  
  
The goblin stopped tapping the drawers and opened the last one tapped. A set of parchments slid out and he glanced through each of the rolls. "Weasleys. Opened a new shop in Diagon Alley. Paid money in securing loans. One-thousand Galleons." The goblin glared again at Harry. "Where did they get their money? Where did they get their gold?"  
  
Oh, no, Harry groaned inwardly. "That...that was me. I had won those Galleons at the Triwizard...and...I didn't want the money so I gave it to them. It's a gift."  
  
"Gift? GIFT?" The goblin seemed incapable of thinking in such terms. "Too much money! Speak the truth! Where did they get their money?"  
  
"Rancalk!" Another goblin spoke, walking slowly over to their corner. This goblin had a shorter nose and longer hair than the one threatening Harry at the moment. The clothes and adornments on this goblin were brighter and cleaner than Rancalk's, suggesting a higher position somehow. "Do not threaten clients in office!"  
  
Rancalk leaned downward to his colleague. "He lies. He says he gives gift of money to these Weasley brats."  
  
The second goblin glowered back. "Humans do that. Wizards do that. Gifts happen. Inquire with the Weasleys if you must. But do not threaten clients. You have been warned."  
  
Rancalk glowered at his supervisor, then glowered more menacingly at Harry. His chair quickly lowered to the ground and he hobbled away from it, carrying some of the Weasley parchments with him. Harry knew he was going to have to check in with the twins to make sure that their legs weren't broken by goblin enforcers.  
  
Harry glanced down to the supervisor. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause problems."  
  
The goblin supervisor sneered, which Harry guessed was the closest thing to a smile that a goblin could get. "Rancalk's broodlings were involved in those bets. Their clan has been shamed in goblin circles." The goblin gave his forehead a quick glance. "You are Harry Potter."  
  
"Yeah," Harry nodded, once again getting the recognition he half-wanted to live without.  
  
"In good standing with Ministry once again," the goblins supervisor stated it as a fact. "Please speak with the Ministry. Impress on them importance of securing Bagman. Very important. Business is difficult without confidence of both bankers and clients."  
  
The supervisor waved his hand back in the direction of the door panel, which slid open at his command. "Please do not let this reflect poorly on our service here. Thank you, come again."  
  
Harry essentially found himself, even with that courteous farewell, summarily pushed back out onto the mall floor. Standing there feeling a tad disoriented, he pondered if going up to 'Goblin-Crusher' Fudge would do him or the goblins any favors. He resolved himself to first check with the Weasley twins to make sure of their safety before checking with their father Arthur Weasley about the Ministry's efforts to appease the goblin community.  
  
At least satisfied that he now carried Muggle money for normal shopping, Harry started his review of the shopping mall and its wares. It had been a long time, since before turning eleven years old, that he had been shopping in the regular world and not in places like Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade. It seemed almost calm, quaint in comparison, with eager overactive children pressing their noses against the candy store windows the only similarity between both worlds.  
  
What really amazed Harry, after nearly an hour of walking the length and width of the second floor of the Friary, was that he was incredibly disinterested. Not bored, not depressed, but...not even really wanting to find anything. It was if he wasn't there to shop, but that he was there to simply be there. It WAS a chance to get away from the Dursleys' home, it felt a lot like he had escaped. In some respects, it was even an escape from the wizarding world in that no one pointed at his forehead or whispered noticeably behind his back or asked for autographs or...  
  
And yet there has to be something more than just walking about, a voice noted in Harry's head.  
  
He noticed a group of teenagers, roughly the same age as himself, that were standing about in front of an electronics store. None of them seemed to be from Whinging or that part of Surrey, none of them looked familiar from before the summer he received his Hogwarts letters. That voice in his head asked Harry what it would be like to approach them, see about hanging out, that something more he had just pondered over a second ago.  
  
"No," Harry sighed to himself. It would seem to awkward. But now he was definitely feeling depressed and alone.  
  
Harry worked his way down to the first floor of the mall, and continued his circling about. He finally spotted a sports store, Footlocker, and walked in as he glanced here and there, spotting the shirts for every football team, cricket gear in small corner of the shop, even a few poster displays of American basketball players posing in mid-dunks. Harry wondered for a moment what it would look like if the players could move in their pictures, then scolded himself for setting his expectations too high. Seeing Ron's room plastered with moving posters of Chumley Cannon players could spoil anyone's view of Muggle sports. Forcing himself to be contented in a normal Muggle-ish environs, he ended up examining sets of reasonably priced shin-high socks.  
  
"Hello, Harry Potter," whispered a soft, rather dreamy voice.  
  
Startled, Harry turned quickly to see Luna Lovegood standing right beside him, who had just begun to turn away from him to glance in the direction of the lawn bowling gear. "Luna?"  
  
She kept looking at the lawn bowling gear. "Yes. I said hello."  
  
"Well, hi." Harry glanced about the store, getting his bearings straight. "What are you doing here? I thought you said your father was going to Sweden to hunt those...those..."  
  
"The Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Yes," she replied, now scanning her eyes across to the women's shoe racks. "But something else more extremely rare and exciting turned up and Dad couldn't resist looking for it."  
  
"Looking for what?" Harry had heard of a lot of things that Luna's father hunted down, all in an attempt to sell more issues of The Quibbler, a wizard-world alternative press filled with stories that even wizards couldn't believe.  
  
Luna finally looked right at him, blinking as though he would already know the answer. "Why, the domesticated Winodyr, of course."  
  
"Oh, of course," Harry couldn't help but smile a bit. "Uh, just what is a domesticated Winny, uh..."  
  
"...Winodyr..."  
  
"...right, you'll have to spell that for me sometime, what's one of those things doing in a shopping mall?"  
  
"Well, the Muggle shops use these devices, some sort of tag I think, to keep track of their goods, and my Dad thinks the Winodyrs are attracted to them somehow. Unfortunately, he's gone running about everywhere. I seem to have lost track of him." Luna circled her eyes around and looked out onto the teeming shoppers rushing across the mall floor.   
  
"Oh." Harry glanced out there too, but as he didn't know what Luna's father looked like he realized he wasn't going to be able to spot him right off. "Are you sure it's a good idea for wizards to go about a crowd shopping mall hunting for odd and unusual beasts?"  
  
"It's not like Muggles can see them," Luna sighed, glancing at Harry with a rather sad, almost sympathetic look.  
  
"But wizards can, I take it."  
  
"Yes." Luna turned and headed out of the store. "But I think finding my father would be easier. Are you busy?"  
  
"Ah, no." Harry turned and followed her out of the store. "By the way, what do these..."  
  
"...Winodyrs..."  
  
"...What do they look like?"  
  
"Simple." Luna walked slowly down one side of the mall, glancing into each window of each store along the way. "They're blue."  
  
Harry took a moment, waiting for something more specific. Finally, he blurted, "That's it? Blue?"  
  
"Yes. Blue."  
  
Harry slapped his forehead, for once causing a non-scar-related headache to rattle about his brain. Rubbing where he had slapped himself, he hurried up to match Luna's gait along the store fronts, keeping an eye on her as well as the traffic of people they were walking against. "Okay, what does your dad look like?"  
  
Luna smiled dreamily, not directly at Harry but at the reflection he was casting in one of the windows they were just passing by. "He's tall, almost Professor Snape's height. Slightly balding, but his hair color's the same as mine and just as unkempt. He'll be carrying a camera."  
  
"Well, that won't help much, there's a few too many tourists at the mall today," Harry muttered. "Well, hold on. The creatures he's looking for go after anti-shoplifting tags. Usually those are on the expensive stuff in the designer clothing shops."  
  
Luna turned to face him, a wide, delightful grin across her face. "Yes! That's it! A designer clothing store!"  
  
Then her face returned to its slightly dreamy, calm demeanor. "Now, what's a designer clothing store look like?"  
  
Harry fought the urge to slap his forehead again. "Hold on, don't you, well, ever go to shopping malls much? I mean, before being invited to go to the school we go to and all, you had to have..."  
  
"Not really," Luna sighed. "Between Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, I've never been anywhere else."  
  
Harry suddenly noticed a large gathering of bulky overweight tourists bearing down on top of the two of them, and he gently urged Luna against the store front they were standing near to clear out of the way. As they passed, Harry turned to Luna. "From what Ginny told me, you and her are pretty much neighbors over in Ottery St. Catchpole. Don't they have stores over there that you go to?"  
  
"Not really. If we need anything, we use the Floo to travel to Diagon Alley. Dad's printing office is near there, so it's easier for him to take care of shopping off work," Luna sighed slightly. "The Weasley family's the same way, I would think. Muggles won't usually have what wizards need when shopping. Except for their father." She smiled slightly at Harry. "He goes in to Ottery for his elecktial things. And you should know that."  
  
Harry found himself smiling back at her. "Okay, then. We ought to move up to the second level. I think there's a few designer stores upstairs."  
  
They found the escalators and rode up, Harry noticing how Luna reacted to the way the rolling escalator steps moved. "I wonder why Hogwarts stairs don't do this, this is remarkable," she sighed.  
  
"I think the stairs are too busy shifting to different floors," Harry replied, suddenly noticing an adult standing close enough to have heard them. Recognizing the perplexed stare of what had to be a Muggle, Harry answered, "Hogwarts. It's an amusement park. Silly rides, actually. Fun for kids."  
  
"Ha," retorted the Muggle. "And they say all the fun stuff is in Orlando."  
  
"What time is it?" Luna asked Harry, rather suddenly as they both stepped off the escalators. "I know the day, but I wonder what the time is."  
  
"Huh?" Harry had been out of habit in wearing a watch, and so glanced about the mall for any wall clock. The Information Booth was too far from where they stood for him to read the digital numbers. "I dunno. Lunchtime, by the sound of my stomach growling..."  
  
"No, it's not that," Luna answered, firmly, her voice losing its dream-like charm. "Look up."  
  
Harry spotted the skylights, past the opening of the third level above them, and saw what she just saw. While the cloud cover passed slowly across couldn't be casting any shadows, the sun was obviously growing darker. "An eclipse?" he whispered.  
  
"Yes," answered Luna, who gave Harry a worried look, eyes widened in shock. "But there isn't supposed to be one today."  
  
Harry glanced about, realizing the mall itself seemed to grow darker by the second, and not just from what was happening outside. The electrical lights had gotten dimmer, not discernibly, but just enough to let the corners of store alcoves fade into darkness.  
  
"Luna," he whispered, continuing his desperate glancing, "there's something wrong. And no one else is noticing it."  
  
"The Muggles," Luna gasped, pulling Harry with her out of the way of more crowds coming up the escalator. "No one is looking up at the eclipse."  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead, wondering if this might be Dark magic, it HAD to be Dark magic. But why wasn't he feeling anything? No pain, no delight. Nothing from Lord Voldemort's emotional state. If he had been planning this, if he was involved, wouldn't Harry be feeling it?  
  
Instead, Harry noticed another sensation gathering about him, almost in synch with the growing darkness within the mall. A wave of cold, like a hand reaching out across the wide floor space of the mall, rippled past him. It had the feel of autumn, and of the fear that comes with autumn.  
  
"Harry..." Luna sounded as if she was shivering, feeling the cold as much as he was.  
  
"I know," he whispered, finding his wand and pulling it out of his back pocket. "Dementors."  
  
Chapter Four: Weekly Plans  
  
WORK IN PROGRESS. 


	4. Chapter Four: Weekly Plans

Chapter 4: Weekly Plans  
  
Harry glanced about, staring into the growing darkness engulfing the mall, doing what he could to spot the Dementors he could feel approaching. The Muggles walking by were beginning to notice the cold, deadening sensation you feel when these creatures move closer to you, but from what Harry could hear they all thought the mall's air conditioning was kicking into overdrive.  
  
Harry also heard Luna whimpering, and turned to see her step backward away from the escalators to rest against a large display case advertising the latest games in the mall's computer shops. "Where are they coming from, Harry? It feels...it's cold, Harry. It was like on the Express...Harry, when they searched the train for Sirius Black. I...why am I remembering..."  
  
Harry moved closer, leaning his back against the display case as well, focusing his vision on the dark corners now engulfing the surrounding storefronts. He remembered the attack from last summer, when two Dementors swooped down into Little Whinging, and kept wondering why the Muggles weren't noticing a thing. Even Dudley, as dim as he was, could sense the coldness, could cry out about the loss of light as the creatures swept into the engulfing darkness in search of prey. And still he couldn't see where they could be coming from.  
  
"Luna," he whispered. "Stay focused. Remember the training in DA. The Patronus spell, you need to stay focused on happy thoughts. Luna?"  
  
"Yes," she whispered back. "I'm still here. But...Harry...I never made a successful Patronus. At least Hermione..."  
  
Her whisper became urgent. "Harry. It's over there."   
  
Harry glanced quickly at Luna, then noticed the direction she stared at. The shape and movement of the cloaked figure passing by them along the far side of the storefronts was most definitely a Dementor. What surprised Harry was its apparent disinterest in any particular person, merely shuffling along, touching long gray bony fingers upon the shoulders of the people walking in the opposite direction. Like a shark swimming against an unending tide, the Dementor made its way from person to person, each one of them shuddering in response to a shadow they couldn't see but could finally, almost horrifically feel.  
  
The ones touched swooned as soon as the cloaked creature passed, garnering some notice by the others surrounding them, until they too were touched and swooned themselves. A growing murmuring noise could be heard by the victims, each of them grouching about sudden aches of their joints, about sudden memories of forgotten moments, about wondering why it felt like someone stepped over their graves.  
  
"What's it doing?" Luna whispered, regaining some sense of calm. "I thought they took all of your happy memories, drained you of good thoughts. It only looks like, that it's just making people feel miserable."  
  
"I dunno," Harry answered. He stepped slowly in the Dementor's direction, partly aware that he was still steeling himself for battle. "It might be there's too many people and only one of him. He can't focus on one person to feed off of. He's...I think he's snacking."  
  
As Harry finished that thought, the Dementor suddenly turned, its cloak swishing an ominous swirl of dust along the floor where it had just walked. The dust swirled higher, reaching up at the people once touched by the creature, like fingers grasping at...  
  
"Oh, no," Harry whispered, stepping back from the dust cloud. No one had mentioned this as a Dementor attack method. No one taught him what Dementors could do with dust.  
  
A hissing noise issued from under the Dementor's hood, and suddenly every human within the dust cloud coughed and seized up, clutching their chests or shoulders. One woman had enough strength to clasp her forehead, as if a pain from a scar was hitting her at that moment, and Harry winced in sympathy.  
  
Finally people noticed the sudden collapsing of a large group, and screams echoed across the mall's long hallways. Loved ones dashed to the fallen, only to suddenly seize up themselves as they reached the dust cloud that now pulsed with life, expanding with each hissed breath of the Dementor that sounded more and more like a satisfied shriek of joy.  
  
"Expecto Patronum," Harry whispered to himself, raising his wand, knowing he had no choice. Muggles had to be seeing him, he was not only violating the rule of underage magic use but the greater rule of avoiding Muggle awareness of wizardry, but Muggles were dying now, he had no choice, lives were at stake.  
  
Harry reached for a happy thought. Memories of Sirius flew in, but that last image of him, stunned, falling into a... No. Harry kept thinking, Cho, the moment they kissed, but there was a sense of guilt, too much shock, he still hadn't fully registered what had happened...  
  
He suddenly remembered the feeling of winning the House Quidditch Cup from two years prior, and just as suddenly recognized a better memory: Ron, smiling from ear to ear, hoisting the Cup himself it what had to be the greatest moment of his life. Gryffindor students of all seven years carrying him into Hogwarts, singing a better revision of the "Weasley Is Our King" song, and realizing how Draco Malfoy must have seethed in seeing Ron win and hearing a song he meant for humiliation used instead for praise.  
  
That's it, Harry smiled to himself, the best thing I can think of. He pointed his wand, keeping that image of Ron's celebration in his mind, and shouted "EXPECT..."  
  
"ENOUGH!" Another voice shouted. Harry turned, suddenly distracted by the appearance of the goblin ATCM supervisor hobbling in the Dementor's direction. "Enough, foulness personified! Enough!"  
  
The Dementor's joyous shriek was replaced by what had to be a gasping snarl of sorts. The dust cloud shrank slightly, but the humans still trapped within it shuddered and cried in pain.  
  
"Enough!" The goblin approached without care or caution. He was facing a Dementor, Harry mused, he wasn't afraid, he didn't react like all happy memories were being consumed in darkness. "Enough! You are interfering! You are hurting business! Enough!"  
  
The Dementor grabbed at the nearest human, lifting him up as if using him as a shield against the goblin's approach. The human finally gasped as though his lungs were finally working properly, only to violently shudder as if he was now freezing to death.  
  
"Enough!" cried the goblin, finally reaching into the dust cloud that had yet to settle, spinning the quill in his hand quickly into the thin fog-like material. As the quill spun faster, faster than Harry's eye could gauge, the cloud changed in appearance, changing from dust to a gold mist. The mist pulled away from the collapsed crowd, as gasps for breath grew louder from the victims, and slowly rose up along the Dementor's dirt-covered cloak, becoming brighter and brighter.  
  
"The light," Harry whispered, noticing the mist growing more golden and more solid. Not yet as bright as the sun, it nonetheless cast the shadows that had grown along the storefronts into retreat, and it rose higher along the cloak. The Dementor shrieked, tried to move, instead tripping against itself and waving wildly as it couldn't even fall down. The human in its grasp fell back to the floor, struggling for breath and warmth.  
  
And still the bright golden mist formed a hard shell against the Dementor's cloak, wrapping like a cocoon around the shrieking, frightened creature. For once, Harry realized a Dementor could be afraid, instead of inducing fear, and watched as the mist finally wrapped itself against the dropped hood, tightening the cloak shut and silencing the Dementor with one last desperate wail.  
  
The goblin stopped twirling his feathered pen, and stood there shaking his head as though disappointed. Muttering something to himself, the goblin supervisor pulled a bell, this one slightly larger and more oddly curved than Rancalk's bell, from around the neck and proceeded to ring it.  
  
A quintet of goblins suddenly scampered past Harry toward the supervisor. Receiving whispered instructions, they nodded among themselves and quickly turned their attentions to the Dementor's victims, still sprawled upon the mall floor. The Muggles that had arrived to help, a handful of security guards and a pair of nearby employees of a store, still seemed unaware, focusing instead on the poor humans struggling to revive from the attack.  
  
The goblins quickly began to walk among the pile, taking notes on small parchments next to each victim, taking record of some sort, before waving their quills over the victims. The pale, clammy skin of each victim would fade back into a normal, warmish pink color, although the vacant stare each gave Harry a small shudder. Satisfied that his underlings were taking care of the situation, the supervisor turned away toward the direction of the Information Desk.  
  
"Wait!" Harry stated, walking up to the goblin supervisor, far too many questions bouncing around in his head. The supervisor glared back at him, which made Harry stammer a bit. "Well, first off, thanks for, you know, taking care of the Dementor, and...well, thanks."  
  
The goblin supervisor blinked as though thanks meant nothing to him. "It was bad for business. Dead customers don't spend their money, after all."  
  
Harry glanced at the solid gold cocoon that was now standing, stunningly unnoticed, in the middle of the mall. "Um, what did you do to it?"  
  
"Killed it." The goblin supervisor stated it like he was counting the number of paper clips in an office drawer. "Not much you can do with foulness. Don't buy anything, and can never deal with those things."  
  
Harry was going to ask another question, but a long woolen robe swung past his face and he turned to see a wizard bending down slightly, as though catching his breath. "The Dementor! My word! Already taken care of, I see!"  
  
Harry recognized the wizard's wiry hair and tough-looking face from Dumbledore's office when Fudge attempted to arrest the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Dawlish, from the Aurors' office, now looked peaked, sweat dripping from the sides of his face, with all the appearance of a long-distance runner trying to make the London-to-Glasgow stretch in under a minute. "Gold. Solid, I suspect. You goblins do know a few handy tricks, eh?"  
  
The goblin supervisor grunted. "Wizards." He turned, ringing his bell again, but at a higher pitch. The goblins checking on the human survivors stopped in their tracks, and immediately ran from the scene, speeding past Harry so fast that by the time he had turned even the dust in their trails had settled back onto the mall floor.  
  
"Wait! Where did they go?" Harry glanced back at Dawlish, only to see he had walked over to the golden cocoon to see about removing it from the mall. Another pair of wizards Apparated next to him, both of them slightly older in appearance and more bookish, more than likely from the Ministry's other departments. The pair quickly moved among the Muggles, waving their wands about muttering words like "Obliviate" which told Harry they were clearing the minds of all possible eyewitnesses to the incident.  
  
Harry turned back to Luna, who had stored her wand back into a large burlap carry-all that she immediately folded and shoved into the outer flannel blue shirt she wore. "Where did those goblins go? Why didn't they follow the head goblin banker back to the Information Desk?"  
  
"Well, that's not where they came from," whispered Luna. "Those goblins were from the food court."  
  
"What are goblins doing in the food court?"  
  
"Running it. Goblins have a controlling interest in every food court on the planet, Harry."  
  
Hands tapped both teenagers on their shoulders, and they turned to face Dawlish, who looked calmed and relaxed. Harry spied past him to see that the golden cocoon had been removed and the affected humans walking away from the scene. Dawlish coughed quickly, a deeper one than former High Inquisitor Umbridge used, to regain Harry's attention before speaking. "Alright, did any of you use magic here today?"  
  
Both Luna and Harry shook their heads. "We didn't, but we were about to and..."  
  
"Hmm, well, you being who you are," the Auror noted, glancing up at Harry's forehead, "I wouldn't have been surprised if you succeeded. Still, don't be surprised if you get any messages, all things considered what just happened."  
  
"But we didn't use any magic!" Luna answered, doing her best to keep her voice from being overheard by the Muggles passing by.  
  
"Of course you didn't! I'm just saying the Ministry's bound to pass word along to every one of you and your schoolmates. Today's been, well, I won't be surprised if I get another call soon about another location..."  
  
"Another?" Harry's eyes widened. "They've been...there's been more attacks just now?"  
  
Dawlish nodded. "All over the place. That's the next thing I want to tell you. Both of you. Go home. Right now, as best you can. It's not safe today, and we can't be sure if anything else is going to happen."   
  
Just at that moment, Harry noticed the mall becoming brighter, as though the sun had returned with the lifting of a spell. Even with the Dementor's capture and destruction within the golden cocoon just minutes earlier, the place had remained dark, fulfilling some sort of time limit. "But wait, we can't leave yet, Luna's father..."  
  
Dawlish glanced down at Luna. "Your father? He's...?"  
  
"Lovegood. Keeley Lovegood." Luna glanced about. "He's...well, we were looking for him before the attack..."  
  
Dawlish's face became sterner. "Look, do what you can to find him. When you're done, get him to take you both home. Now. Get going."  
  
It had been a rather quick walk through all three levels of the Friary, even though it had to have been an hour covering every inch of the place. During it all, Harry had spotted dozens of Muggles commenting oddly on things, of emergency medical teams showing up to deal with a group of tourists suffering dizzy spells at one end of the mall, of unusual noises and smells throughout the place, of a possible gas leak that no one seemed to think was at all dangerous at the moment.  
  
There was no sign of Luna's father, much less anything blue that could have passed for a Winodyr. Finally, Harry collapsed on a mall bench near the main entrance, taking a moment to rest his legs and count the number of grumbling noises his stomach was making.  
  
"Well," Luna sighed as she sat down next to him, tinkering with her butterbeer cap necklace that Harry noticed had gained a few new additions since the end of school year. "I'm not concerned."  
  
"Why not?" Harry asked, perplexed. "There'd been...well, an attack. A pretty serious one. Aren't you worried?"  
  
"Dad's a full-fledged, well, you know," she smiled slightly. It was kind of hard to discuss wizarding out in the open. "He can protect himself."  
  
"Yeah, but still..."  
  
"He's probably gone to check other stores," Luna continued, glancing outward. "Maybe he wasn't even in the mall when it happened, so he's safe."  
  
Harry nodded, and noted that her dad might not have known about it, which explained why Luna's father wasn't conspicuously running about terrified that something might have happened to his daughter. "So what do we do?"  
  
Luna continued to look out the mall's main entrance. "Do you know any good eateries here? I think you're hungry."  
  
Harry smiled. "You could hear my stomach growling?"  
  
"No. It's just I remembered you were complaining about that just before the attack." Luna finally glanced at him for a second with a slight smile, before resuming her outward stare. "There's a fish and chips place near the Floo Network stop down the street. Sound good?"  
  
Harry nodded at that. It sounded like there was more walking involved, but he was sure his stomach could survive another hour or two.  
  
They headed out of the Friary and onto the streets of Guildford. The cloud cover had remained since morning, but it was certainly brighter than it had been in hours, with very little threat of storm. It felt more like a late spring than early summer, and the walk outside didn't seem so bad to Harry.  
  
The pair did come across an unusual scene outside of Waterstones, a book store. Harry had never seen so many children, much of them younger than he was, standing in queue quietly and calmly. A few had their noses pressed against the windows, glancing back and forth at the titles on display, but apparently not finding what they were looking for.  
  
"What is happening here?" Luna asked a small girl, barely the same size as Ginny back when Harry first met the Weasleys (was it already that long ago? Harry mused.).  
  
"We're waiting for a book to come out," the girl answered, not turning her attention away from the front door.  
  
"Oh. What's the title?"  
  
"Well, we don't know it, actually." The girl shrugged. "We just know there's a book out there for us."  
  
"A whole series of them," a thin boy added, pressing his nose against the store window.  
  
The doorway swung open as a taller girl, almost the same age as Harry and Luna, puffed her way outside, a indignant look on her face. "Bloody manager. Get all mad with me, I'm actually wanting to a be a bloody customer..."  
  
"Well?" all of the children shouted at once.  
  
The tall girl sighed. "Same answer as last week. It's not in, yet."  
  
The group of children groaned, one or two of them openly wailing their heads off. "Didn't you tell the manager we were waiting?" the thin boy asked.  
  
"Yeah, I did. Even suggested he throw a midnight store opening party when the book comes in, so that all the kids would have fun staying up late waiting for it. Idiot, yelling at me that I need to bring him the information on what the book title is..."  
  
Harry regretted it the second he asked the question. "Well, what is the book title?"  
  
Every child in the mob glared at him as though he had just questioned the existence of the Easter Bunny. "Why should you be asking?" the tall girl snorted. "You ought to know what we're waiting for."  
  
Harry glanced at Luna, whose widened stunned stare back at him suggested they should both leave the scene. Slowly, the two stepped back away from the store, moving away from the intense, silent mob of preteen book readers. They got as far as the next street corner before turning their backs to the group and hurrying away.  
  
"Now I know how everyone feels around me," Luna muttered, checking over her shoulder to make sure they were safely away. "It's a good thing we left."  
  
"Did you think they were going to attack us?" Harry asked.  
  
"Not at that point," Luna sighed. "I was going to ask them if the cover of the book was blue."  
  
"Oh." Harry suppressed a smile. "More blue. Well, that would have angered them up a bit, I suppose."  
  
"Not really. From what my father tells me, in those situations where people are waiting for a book they don't know the title to, the cover of the book should always be blue." Luna smiled slightly. "I just wanted to confirm his theory."  
  
Harry knew of a word one could say when exasperated, confused, or both, but for the life of him couldn't remember it at the moment. Instead, he shook his head. "I hope we're close to that fish and chips place."  
  
It was close, three blocks down. The Hedgehog Brothers Taco Company, offering fish and chips with a Mexican flavor, was a small, cramped place with no seating tables and one long bar facing the storefront window. Most people were placing the orders for carry-out, walking back into the street snacking on the meals. After a few minutes in line, they made their orders: Luna asking for a haddock taco, Harry sticking to the more traditional breaded cod with thick chips wrapped in the financial section of yesterday's Guardian paper.  
  
"It's odd, what Muggles have to eat, isn't it?" Luna asked after taking a few bites of her taco. They were walking down toward the riverside at that point, with the cloudy skies becoming clearer overhead.  
  
"Well, what we eat is odd to them," Harry replied. "I have to admit the meals at school are rich compared to what I get back at the Dursleys, and I'm not knocking it, I love Hogwarts' meals. It's just, Muggles, well, they don't even know what butterbeer is let alone how to make it, I'd bet. But still, there's something to be said for a good slice of Chicago-style pizza."  
  
Luna tilted her head at him ever so slightly. "How could you have a Chicago pizza in England?"  
  
Harry smiled, thinking back. "When I was nine, at school, a history teacher was planning a field trip to the States for the older students. They threw a farewell party a few weeks before school ended, held this banquet that I thought was enormous at the time, serving food from the cities they were going to. Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, and New York. My cousin Dudley did what he could to keep me from attending, he and his friends finding a nice broom closet to shove me into..."  
  
"No!" Luna cried out, having apparently never heard of the severity of Harry's childhood.  
  
"...But the teacher did a head count, saw I wasn't at the cafeteria, hurried about and found me under a pile of wet mops. By the time he escorted me back, the cheese steaks and the Cajun shrimp were all gone, but the other teachers had saved a few slices of the pizza, so I had gotten a few of those. They were homemade, not a special order from a restaurant or anything, but still, very delicious. This fish and chips isn't so bad either. Want a bite?"  
  
Luna shook her head. "Was that cousin of yours ever punished?" she asked, her dreamy visage dampened with a scowl that didn't suit her.  
  
Harry shook his head. "My uncle and aunt make a fuss if Dudley gets so much as a stern talking-to. The teachers knew by then to let it go. They did what they could, putting me into other class groups, but I couldn't avoid recess or the walks to school."  
  
Harry noticed he was doing something he hadn't really done much before, talking about his childhood with someone else. He'd told Ron and Hermione a few things, but not in such detail. He glanced at Luna, forcing a smile. "That's too depressing. Let's not talk about that, okay?"  
  
"Okay." Luna immediately focused her attention elsewhere. "Let's talk about this. What's a cinema?"  
  
Harry realized they had stopped near a theater, the Odeon, where large groups of people were circling in and rushing out. It must have been just at that moment where a lot of movies were finishing, families and gangs of teenagers shouting about the latest science fiction mystery action comedy epic just released that weekend. "Oh, yeah," he replied. "Pictures."  
  
Luna glanced at the posters framed against the nearby wall. "And these are the ones that are frozen, right? So why do Muggles pay so much money to sit and watch pictures that don't move?"  
  
"Well, no, they do move, actually." Harry grinned, doing his best not to laugh at Luna's apparent naivety. He supposed Ron and his family would be confused as well, and he'd never laugh if they were like this. "They call them 'moving pictures' or movies if you were in the States, I think."  
  
He lowered his voice, making sure they weren't overheard. "What it is, they're like the portraits back at school. Except that they've hired people to dress up and play roles, which are copied onto a film. And then they process the film so it can be shipped out and viewed everywhere. And then people go in, and if they hate the film they throw popcorn at it. Well, unless it's a midnight movie called 'Rocky Horror' in which case I think they're expected to throw popcorn at it even though they like it. And that's, well, a movie."  
  
"Oh." Luna's reply suggested she hadn't grasped a single concept of what had just been explained. She walked over and tapped the Plexiglas casings of the posters, waiting for Harry to join her there before whispering, "Well, these still don't movie any."  
  
"No, no, say 'move,' the term 'movie' should be for the film itself, not the poster." Harry sighed. "You've never seen one?"  
  
"No." Luna stared at him, pleasantly. "Have you?"  
  
"Yeah. School field trips, Uncle Vernon would leave me back in the..." Harry nearly finished describing how he'd be left in the cupboard under the stairs while the Dursleys would hurry out to enjoy themselves at the cinema. "Yeah. I've seen a few."  
  
"What were they like?"  
  
"I dunno," he shrugged then glanced at her. "Well, I mean, I liked a few of them I saw, they were pretty good..."  
  
"Are any of these pretty good?" Luna waved her hand along the row of poster displays, most of them summer action films from Hollywood, except for an Indian-based musical martial arts classic that had been showing for three straight years. Harry was amazed that wasn't out on video by now.  
  
He shrugged again. "It depends on your tastes. I mean, do you like things exploding and cars getting crushed and..."  
  
He noticed Luna was looking at him in shock, not realizing such carnage and mayhem were staged by the filmmakers. "It's okay. It's just...well, movies. It's not real."  
  
Luna blinked a few times, apparently still perplexed.  
  
Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. "You should see one, I suppose. Maybe then you'll get it."  
  
"Good. That sounds like a great idea," she smiled dreamily. Luna glanced up and down the posters. "Which one do you like?"  
  
Harry scowled a bit, arching an eyebrow. That he liked? She was probably asking him which one to suggest for her and her father to see, perhaps. Or...  
  
A sudden sensation hit his stomach, the one where this black hole appears and sucks everything into oblivion. Harry hoped it wasn't the fish he was finishing off for lunch. Probably not. It wasn't the fish's fault that Luna was sounding like she was setting him up for a date.  
  
At least, it sounded that way. He glanced at Luna again, who would blink at him out of the corner of her eyes as she faced the posters advertising current and upcoming films. Harry couldn't, didn't want to read anything odd into it. After all, she wasn't familiar with most things in the Muggle world, maybe she simply wanted someone with experience to show her what a film was like. He shouldn't be reading any intentions into it.  
  
And it wasn't like she was a stranger, after all. Having been a member of Dumbledore's Army, helping get his story about Voldemort's return through her father's magazine, even going to the Ministry to rescue Sirius along with Harry and his friends in Gryffindor. She was a friend, plain and simple. If she wanted to go to a cinema with a friend, why should he read anything else into it?  
  
"Well," Harry finally said, letting his stomach settle down. "I guess you'd want a normal person film. Nothing with explosions in it, I guess." He examined each of the posters. As it was the summer time, the studios were pushing a lot of big budget explosion films, none of which might appeal to Luna. He walked down the row of posters, checking each one, seeing if...  
  
Here was a film that didn't promote cars being crashed or robots being blown up or comets hitting the Earth or aliens eating people's faces. It showed a tandem of young adults standing as a group in front of a neon sign, poised to make a serious fashion statement. Harry vaguely recognized the brunette girl up front, someone in the tabloids once in awhile, an American rock star's daughter who was doing the model/actress scene. 'Empire Records' was the title, and the labels and ratings covering it suggested it was a romantic comedy, so hopefully it didn't have gunplay or cars crashing in it. It didn't look too shabby.  
  
Luna walked up and tapped the Plexiglas protecting the 'Empire Records' poster. "This looks interesting."  
  
"You think you might like to see this one?" Harry asked.  
  
"No, I mean it's interesting." Luna tapped each of the faces of the actresses standing in front of the group. "This one looks like a Wood Elf. This bald one, she's got to be a witch. And this blonde here would be impeccably British if only she gained a few pounds."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "They're just actresses."  
  
"So is it any good?" Luna tapped the Plexiglas at the title. "It says 'Open 'til Midnight.' Is that when they stop showing this move thing?"  
  
"No, it's...never mind." Harry looked at the time showings. "Actually, it's coming out next Friday. It's not in yet."  
  
"Oh." Luna nodded, then looked at him rather fretfully. "So, um, did you want to go with me to see it? I mean, I'll need help with the popcorn throwing, I think."  
  
"No, no, you should only throw the popcorn if you hate it." Harry smiled at that, then stopped smiling when he realized he was being directly offered a date. It was next week. Would he be able to sneak out of the Dursleys' home next week? What if Tonks wasn't available to cover for him, or if Uncle Vernon had him painting the walls for Aunt Petunia, or...or...  
  
Or what if I stopped being scared, Harry told himself in a good firm voice. It's just a date, with a friend. No expectations. Just go see the film. It'll be fun.  
  
"Yeah, next week," he nodded. "I think I can make it next week."  
  
They had finished up their meals and had walked a bit more along the riverfront, which wasn't too scenic as there weren't a lot of boats floating around, and most of the shops and restaurants along the way were not as active as the mall. Perhaps at night, Harry mused, when people go out to pubs and eateries and enjoy themselves, perhaps it looks nicer then...  
  
The conversations with Luna during the rest of the afternoon made the day fly by quickly. Harry hadn't even realized that they had stopped looking for Luna's father, or that they were supposed to be getting safely home after the Dementor attack. It wasn't until a peck of owls flew overhead that Harry remembered Dawlish's admonition that things were seriously dangerous out in the world that day, and that Luna should be finding her father as soon as possible.  
  
"He'd gone home, I'd think," Luna answered serenely. "He has to be waiting for me, it's been hours since that incident."  
  
"Well, then, let's get you home," Harry replied. "Your dad has got to be upset, horrified that you might be hurt or something."  
  
Luna agreed, and pointed in the direction of the Floo Network spot. It turned out to be in a home design store displaying all bits of furniture and wall coverings, including a handful of fireplace units.  
  
"Do you use this?" Luna asked, pulling out her burlap sack and folding it open. Harry noticed the bag getting larger with each unfurling, until it was four times its original size. She opened it up to reveal a treasure trove of items, loose metal pieces, an infinite count of beads, a keychain filled with so many keys that Harry just knew they were there for adornment only, papers by the handful, a dog-eared copy of a C.S. Lewis Narnia novel, finely polished rocks of various colors and sizes, and what had to be a gray pointed hat that couldn't possibly fit her.  
  
"I don't have a bag like that," Harry gasped, amazed.  
  
"Oh, no, not this," she said serenely, as though incapable of breaking out into giggles. "I mean the Floo Powder." She pulled out a smaller, coal-colored pouch and opened it. "Is your home set up for the network?"  
  
Harry had noticed last summer that Uncle Vernon had removed the electric fireplace he had installed. There was that incident where the Weasleys had shown up in the closed-off chimney, and blown it open. Harry figured his uncle wasn't too keen to have wizards showing up through his fireplace, but had decided that if any did it would be another mess to deal with. Since Uncle Vernon glared at his direction blaming him for absolutely everything that happened, Harry never really gave it much thought when it had been removed.  
  
"No," he shook his head finally. "Well, I've used it before to travel, but I don't think I'm linked up at home. At least, I'm not too sure if I'd get back in one piece."  
  
"I know," Luna sighed. "It's not my favorite way to travel, either. I once ended up in Newcastle Upon Tyne."  
  
"Well, it couldn't have been that bad up there."  
  
"It was, I mean, who puts a fireplace in a men's bathroom anymore?" Luna sighed again, pulling out a flint to strike a fire in the fireplace they were facing. Once a small flame appeared, she tossed some of the Floo Powder into the fireplace. As the flames changed color, she turned to Harry. "Shall I see you at this Odeon place next Friday, then?"  
  
"Sure. Early afternoon alright?"  
  
"Yes." Luna smiled rather brightly, then turned to the fireplace. "Ottery St. Catchpole, Lovegood residence!" she shouted as she jumped over the flame. With a poof and a 'Swfpth' noise she disappeared into the Floo Network.  
  
Harry nodded, turned and walked to the bus stop for the ride back to Little Whinging, and began to fret over exactly what he had gotten himself into. 


	5. Chapter Five: Deliveries and FastTraveli...

Chapter 5: Deliveries and Fast-Traveling News  
  
Harry walked along the neighborhood street toward Privet Drive, feeling slightly tense from the events of the past few hours. The Dementor attack. Word that such attacks were happening across the countryside. Setting up a Friday date with Luna Lovegood. And the financial reports in the Guardian pages that wrapped his fish and chips didn't look too promising either.  
  
He got as close as the fourth house around the corner from his destination when the cat got in front of him. The orange tabby with unusual square markings about the eyes calmly, and rather sternly, sat down directly in Harry's path. Puzzled, he stopped, and found himself in a staring match with this stiffly sitting tabby.  
  
It took a minute before Harry remembered seeing this cat before, back at Hogwarts in his first year. "Hullo, Professor McGonagall," he muttered with a slight wave of greeting.  
  
The cat kept looking at him, sternly and reprovingly.  
  
"Uh, right," Harry muttered to himself, and walked closer to the Animagus professor of his Transfiguration classes. "Look," he whispered, "I'm heading home right now. Tonks has been covering for me all day. I don't know if we can meet right now."  
  
The cat blinked once and scowled.  
  
Harry scowled back. "I'm worried the longer I'm away the more likely she'll do or say something wrong and then...well."  
  
The cat actually looked like it sighed. It definitely rolled its eyes in frustration before standing up and moving slowly out of Harry's way.  
  
Harry felt nervous. "Am I in any trouble? Is that why you're here?"  
  
"No, you're not in trouble, Potter. But we do need to talk to you."  
  
Harry jumped, giving out a quick yelp before turning about to stare in horror at Severus Snape, his Potions professor. Snape appeared slightly different from when Harry has seen him, at school or at the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, in a professional herring-bone business suit instead of his dark robes.  
  
"Don't act so surprised, Potter," Snape continued with his patented sneer. "And if you were surprised, I'm disappointed in your abilities to defend yourself if you'll let anyone catch you off guard like that."  
  
Harry wanted to respond, say something in his defense, certainly give Snape the insults he so clearly deserved at the moment, but he bit his tongue knowing that the head of Gryffindor House was sitting a few feet away from them. "I have to get home...sir," he spat out that last word.  
  
"Fine, then," Snape answered, glancing away indifferently. "Go off and do whatever you like."  
  
"It's not what I like. I have to go home now and you know it!"  
  
A loud hissing snarl came right at the both of them, and they turned to glare at McGonagall in her cat form. She growled a bit as cats were capable of doing, and then hissed again loudly, right at Snape.  
  
Seemingly miffed if not downright chastened, Snape glowered back at Harry. "Potter, go home then. Mrs. Figg will be by later, perhaps with some sort of excuse for you to come to her house. We will talk then."  
  
He swept past the teen, attempting to swish his suit jacket out of habit, a trick that honestly works better with robes. The orange cat glared at him as Snape passed, then glanced quickly at Harry with an equally disproving look before hurrying off in the direction of Mrs. Figg's house.   
  
Harry's head ached, not from his lightning scar as usual, but elsewhere in his brain, and he mentally kicked himself when he realized he had made direct eye contact with Snape, excellent at Legilimency who more than likely peered into Harry's mind for something.  
  
"Need to learn Occlumency," he muttered to himself as he hurried along the row of houses back to 4 Privet Drive.  
  
He spotted Uncle Vernon's car in the driveway, which wasn't too shocking since Harry's bus ride back from Guildford took almost forever to get to Little Whinging. Vernon had most likely just gotten back from his day of shouting and pillaging of office supplies at his drill-making company. Whether or not that meant he would be in a good mood, Harry didn't want to find out. Just sneak in, he thought to himself, get up the stairs and hide in my room and make absolutely sure Tonks didn't do anything reckless or dangerous or especially magical.  
  
He made it about as far as the first step of the stairs, having succeeded in opening the front door without a squeak. "YOU THERE! WHAT'S THIS COMING RIGHT BACK IN AGAIN?!"  
  
Uncle Vernon stormed as fast as a large, whale-shaped man could move. His face was red and his mustache whiskers about ready to fall off from the twitching rippling across his lips. He glowered at Harry, who stood there in total silence unable to think what could have possibly happened. "Did you THINK, like you ever could you stupid little boy, that you could go back outside and repair the damage YOU'VE DONE?!"  
  
Harry had only one defense. "I...I..."  
  
Aunt Petunia stood nearby, having followed her husband down the hallway. "Well, it sounds like he had repaired it, so I wouldn't yell at him for that."  
  
Vernon turned in shock, unable to accept his wife actually speaking up for this...this freak of a boy.  
  
Petunia didn't look at him but glowered viciously at her nephew. "You ought to yell at this monstrosity for having DONE IT in the FIRST PLACE! The embarrassment of the whole afternoon! You, oh, damn it all!" She was close to tears at this point. "If you were going outside you should have stayed out there! For once you should have gone away, and to blazes with any promises I made to that dimwit of an idiot hippie professor...whatever he is!"  
  
Vernon turned back at Harry, still red in the face and pushing a thick index finger near the teen's nose. "Look what you've done, boy. Your aunt hasn't cried in ages, even with all the trouble you've put us through before this day. And now look. I've ordered you to your room, and BY GOD, YOU'LL STAY THERE FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH! AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR RUDDY FRIENDS WITH THEIR THREATS! AND I DON'T CARE IF THE NEIGHBORS HEAR ANY OF THIS, IT'S CERTAINLY TOO LATE FOR THAT THANKS TO YOU! NOW GO UPSTAIRS!!!"  
  
Harry hurried upstairs without a glance at his relatives, unable to respond in any way. He sped into his room and shut the door as swiftly as he could. And then he took a moment to blink, because he was now in the cleanest room he had ever seen.  
  
Both Harry and Dudley were guilty of the teenage habit of using bedrooms as pig sties, although Dudley achieved great things with his piles of mess due to his owning three times as much junk as Harry. But now, Harry's room actually had a carpet and a bookshelf that contained books. The desk appeared to be a nice, average shade of brown no longer draped by unwashed shirts and unopened homework scrolls brought back from Hogwarts. Hedwig's cage also appeared tidy and well-kept, which Harry usually did on a regular basis after his pet owl snapped at him last summer for not cleaning it while she was away.   
  
The only thing missing was a Metamorphmagus named Tonks.  
  
"Hello?" Harry whispered, walking over to the closet to see if she had shoved herself in there.  
  
The voice came from under the bed, a forlorn, unhappy sigh. "Wotcher, Harry."  
  
He watched as his stunt double, Tonks reshaped in his image, rolled out from underneath a straightened, neatly lined bed. She/He looked utterly despondent, not wanting to look the real Harry in the eye.  
  
"Tonks," Harry hissed, trying not to sound angry. He figured Uncle Vernon had tossed a hurricane of harsh language at her/him already, and he didn't want to echo his uncle. "What happened out there?"  
  
She/he remained despondent. "I tried fixing the dogwoods."  
  
"The what?"  
  
There was a tapping at the window, and Harry spotted a large white shape flapping by. He hurried over, opening the window and letting Hedwig flap quickly into the room. She settled atop her cage, twisting her head in nearly every direction before hooting out a note of shock in seeing a well-cleaned room.  
  
"Take a look down," Tonks sighed, pointing to the open window.  
  
Harry glanced down, examining the house wall beneath him and seeing what he saw when he arrived home: a well-cut set of hedges. "What am I supposed to look for?"  
  
"Well, those shrubs, they are dogwoods, aren't they?"  
  
Harry looked again before turning to face Tonks. "Uh, no. Those are privets. That's where the street name comes from. All the houses along here have those shrubs. They're perfectly normal shrubbery, thank you very much. In fact, I think dogwoods are trees. I think."  
  
"Oh." Tonks nodded slowly, and with each nod shook free an aspect of her original face, her nose, her chin, her cheeks, finally her eyes. With a shake of her head the hair returned to a purple hue. "No wonder your aunt got upset with the barking."  
  
Harry blinked. "What barking?"  
  
Finally herself, Tonks shrugged. "I used magic to fix the shrubbery. But when I did, I... Well, I mispronounced a few things."  
  
He groaned, not quietly enough. "Oh, no."  
  
Tonks nodded some more. "And you know, normally by my age, having gone through Hogwarts and all that Auror training, I don't really need to pronounce magic to do the magic. The words are just a focusing device, like the wand. Once you've got the spell down you don't really have to say it all the time."  
  
Harry nodded, remembering seeing the older wizards, Dumbledore and Voldemort particularly, promptly using defensive spells and attacks without so much as a whisper during the battle in... He stopped thinking about that, and blinked a few times to help forget.  
  
"But I, well," Tonks continued, suppressing a tearful sigh, "let's get it out there then, I slept through Sprout's classes. Honestly, I wasn't too smart like in Herbology. You've done those mandrakes by now, right?"  
  
Another nod from Harry.  
  
Tonks pointed to her ears. "Didn't wear earmuffs the first day. In fact, from what I can remember before I got knocked unconscious, I had transfigured the earmuffs into hedgehogs before class started, showing off to some of my Ravenclaw friends. You can't wear hedgehogs and get away with it, trust me on that one."  
  
Harry nodded, then looked around again at his room. "So what happened here?"  
  
"Well, I cleaned it up for you, Harry." Tonks smiled rather forcefully.  
  
Harry turned and scowled at her. "But I thought you hated clean rooms."  
  
"A guilty conscience can drive you to desperate acts, Harry. I screwed up your day off, so I owed you. Sorry."  
  
Harry tried smiling a bit, but got a little worried about Tonks' forlorn mood. He stepped over to the bed, taking a seat at the other corner of it. "Well, don't get too upset about it, Tonks. In a way, it's good you've got my relatives mad at me. Kinda feels like normal to be in the cupboard again, so to speak."  
  
"Oh, Harry, don't, I bunged it out the window for you, didn't have to come back home with all this to end your day."  
  
"The way Uncle Vernon's steaming about, it's ending my whole month," Harry replied. "I told you, don't worry. This is normal for me."  
  
"Well, anyway." Tonks pointed to Hedwig. "Got a note. And there's another one an owl dropped off earlier, left it with me thinking I was you, apparently."  
  
"You're still a great Metamorphmagus, Tonks," Harry said with a smile, doing his best to cheer her. He spotted the envelope she stuck underneath the owl cage, and he walked over to his bird, who seemed content in lifting up her leg carrying a small rolled-up parchment.  
  
Hedwig's letter was from Ron, written rather hastily and with a scent of ocean spray on it:  
  
Harry. I can't believe I've been talked into it, but Hermione's gone and invited me to go to her parents' place in France for a few weeks. Seems they were peeved about their daughter running off during Christmas, even though it was...well, how my Dad was doing, you know. So they're insisting I visit. Weird, huh? Ginny wasn't invited, though, don't know why, she loves to travel. Anyway, Hermione's asking me about what videotapes to watch. She's trying to explain it to me, and my Dad's real keen on explaining it too, which is making it worse 'cause I know he's hopeless with this elecktical junk, but still it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Videotape, sounds a little like Spellotape but I can't imagine why anyone would sit and watch Spellotape. Hermione's suggesting her family watch something called 'Star Wars' with me, three videotapes in fact like they were book volumes, she called it a trilogy whatever that is, said you'd know the story in it for some reason. Odd title, though. It's got to be about centaurs fighting over celestial interpretations, right? But I don't get what this Empire bit is on this second box. Before I see it, could you at least drop me a post explaining it all?  
  
I'm at Dover, using the Muggles' underwater train to get to France. Send a reply to Hermione, she'll want to hear from you too.  
  
Harry chuckled, flashing back to Luna's confusion regarding film. He was right that Ron would be just as clueless. Spotting the other letter, he pulled it out from under Hedwig's cage and glanced at it:  
  
To all students of Hogwarts:  
  
With regards to today's nationwide incidents involving Dementor attacks, the Ministry of Magic wishes to remind underage practitioners of magic that the rules barring the use of magic in the presence of Muggles will be overlooked, based of the interpretation of Clause 7 of the law governing the misuse of magic by underage witches and wizards.  
  
The Ministry commends those students who made efforts in assisting our agents and Aurors in the defense of both wizarding and Muggle bystanders in this time of crisis, and public commendations will be issued shortly as soon as all investigations into these attacks are concluded.  
  
We are aware of the growing concern of both yourselves and your parents, regarding the Dementor attacks this day. We assure all of you that the Ministry is taking every step to confirm these attacks will not be repeated, and that the perpetrators behind these attacks on our way of life will be caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law.  
  
Our prayers are with you and yours this day.  
  
Signed,  
  
Mafalda Hopkirk  
  
Improper Use of Magic office  
  
Ministry of Magic  
  
"Did you hear about the attacks, Tonks?" Harry asked, handing over Hopkirk's letter to her.  
  
Tonks scowled, quizzically. She grabbed the note, reading it for about two second before spotting the words 'Dementor' and 'attacks' so closely together on the page. Her skin turned so pale that Harry knew it was her shape-changing ability overreacting to the stunning news. "Oh my... Oh my Lord no. This... I hadn't heard."  
  
"Yeah, I had bumped into one of your Auror co-workers at the mall. Dawlish, that's who it was."  
  
Tonks glanced at him, eyes widening to their fullest. "There was an attack there? Oh no. No..."  
  
"Well, the goblins got involved. No one died," Harry reassured her. "But it sounds like the whole country got hit by attacks."  
  
"I ought to go," Tonks whispered, folding up the letter and handing it back to Harry. "I can Apparate to the Ministry, check in, I'm not scheduled to go in today but still they're going to need extra hands. Oh, what a day this has been!"  
  
"No, wait Tonks, I wanted to ask you..." Harry reached out with his hand to stop her from disappearing, but with a swift inhaling noise she seemingly folded in on herself until she was no longer in the room. Harry sighed, having not gotten a chance to ask her about Guildford and goblins and one or two other things flitting about in his brain. He collapsed on the bed, giving Hedwig a sad look. "Well, at least the day started off well."  
  
Hedwig hooted softly, then flapped her way into the cage to get herself a beakful of owl treats for dinner.  
  
Harry took a moment on the bed, then sat up realizing Ron and Hermione both would want a response as soon as possible. He'd also need to see if Ron could get word through his father about the Dementor attacks, and also to make sure the goblins didn't go past threats in investigating the Weasley twins' dealings with Bagman. It took a minute searching the desk drawers to find where Tonks had restocked the parchment paper, and with a dip of the quill into his ink pot he started his note:  
  
Ron and Hermione, it's been a day.  
  
By the time you get this letter you've already heard about the attacks. I was present at one of them, but was saved at the last minute by a group of goblins who work at this mall in Guildford. By the way, Ron, get in touch with the twins, I had accidentally let slip that Bagman was in debt to them, and the goblins were suspicious about the galleons I'd given them awhile back. Tell them I'm sorry they got dragged into it.  
  
Ron, could you also ask your dad about the details of the attacks? Unless he's too busy, or I suppose the Ministry might want to keep it hushed up, in case he can't tell you.  
  
Hermione, shame on you dragging Ron off to see Star Wars. (Harry started grinning to himself as he wrote) He'll be confused enough if he finds out about Jedi and the Force and that whole Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker thing. Last thing I need is for him to start asking about my wand hand being made out of wires and bits. No, actually, I hope he enjoys it. Just be patient with him, he's going to be totally disoriented about movies. I'm pretty sure he will be, I've bumped into Luna Lovegood at the mall and she definitely had a hard time understanding the whole concept of motion pictures.  
  
Harry paused, taking a moment to think about what else to add to the note, wondering if he should even tell them about the date, wondering even further if he'll ever be allowed to leave the Dursley home for the rest of the summer. He kept thinking, and didn't realize how long he had been sitting there thinking until the doorbell rang.  
  
Harry listened through the door as best he could, recognizing Uncle Vernon's voice easily as he immediately blustered about how the shrubbery was invaded by a pack of wild dogs, an excuse for anything other than the plants being magically altered by a klutzy witch. Harry had a harder time spotting the other voice but it became clear it was a woman's, and from Uncle Vernon's protestations that his nephew was under house arrest Harry realized it had to be Mrs. Figg looking to drag Harry over to her house to meet with Snape and McGonagall.  
  
After a few blustery minutes of his uncle insisting he was doomed forever to rot in his bedroom, the voices faded and the front door closed quickly and loudly. Harry waited to see if Uncle Vernon would come upstairs to taunt him somehow, but nothing happened. He assumed that his uncle and aunt have deemed to avoid him and the topic of him altogether this evening. Sighing, he went back to the desk and to the parchment.  
  
After giving it another half-hour of thought, Harry couldn't think of a thing to add to the letter, and with a sigh folded it up and nodded to Hedwig. "Here, take this to Hermione's place, but this one's in France so it's a further distance."  
  
Hedwig hooted proudly, somehow noting she had made the distance before, as she held up her carrying leg. Once secured, the white owl flapped over to the window sill and paused to get a better leap off into the darkening sunset sky. With one more great flap of her wings, she cleared the neighbor's rooftop with ease, and hurriedly faded into the distance.  
  
Harry noticed now he had very little else to do, and wasn't about to dare a sneak down into the kitchen to see if he would be allowed to join for supper: he knew better after all these years. He glanced about the room, wondering if he should start messing it up again just so it could feel normal. Sighing, he turned to do his homework.  
  
He was just three paragraphs into his history report on the goblin attacks against Muggles in upper Bohemia in 1881 when there was another ring of the doorbell. Harry went and pressed his ear against the door, this time picking up two voices, male and female, unmistakably insistent. Snape and McGonagall had come in person. To 4 Privet Drive.  
  
"May God have mercy," Harry groaned, bumping his head slowly against the door. He never once imagined what it could be like for any of the professors to be inside the home of Muggles, especially a home such as the Dursleys'. While he knew neither teacher to be as, well, inept was the only word to describe Mr. Weasley, Harry did know that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were going to be extremely defensive and overanxious because of the Weasleys' visit two years ago. And moreover, it was Snape, Harry's least favorite teacher. Even with McGonagall here to keep him in line, Snape was bound to do something to humiliate Harry in front of his relatives.  
  
He stayed there, head pressed against the door, listening to the voices grow urgent and confrontational, but never loud. Finally, he heard large heavy footsteps on the stairs and hallway, and someone twisting the doorknob and shoving it open, pushing Harry back against the bed. Uncle Vernon stuck half his body behind the door as he faced his nephew, with a neck red from puffing and a face white from fear. "You certainly know how to cause a lot of trouble don't you, you little brat."  
  
Harry didn't answer. He was suddenly extremely tired. Tired of the whole thing.  
  
Uncle Vernon puffed out his neck a little more. "You've got two of your...teachers here. I said I didn't want this...stuff inside my house. I've been a reasonable man about all of this madness, I've been patient to a fault, but this is it. I want you to go downstairs, tell those...those people want they want to know, and tell them to get out and make bloody sure none of their kind ever show up again ever on my doorstep. Is that understood?"  
  
Harry avoided his gaze, staring instead at his shoes. "Yes." He stood, moving to the doorway with a resigned expression and drooped shoulders.  
  
Uncle Vernon moved out of the way, and Harry squeezed past him as best he could. He stopped briefly, allowing a frightened Dudley, who was obviously no longer comfortable hiding in the kitchen, waddle past him for the safety of his own room. With slow steps, Harry headed down the stairs into the Dursleys' living room.  
  
Snape had remained standing between the foyer and the living room window, glancing about a Muggles' abode with a look both puzzling and sickened. His business suit still looked odd to Harry, but he was certain Uncle Vernon would have been shocked by Snape's priestly black robes. McGonagall, wearing a black robe with orange edges and sleeve cuffs, had taken a seat in a recliner, back to the opened-out fireplace, quietly nibbling on a biscuit. Harry guessed the professor brought her own since Aunt Petunia didn't serve those types of biscuits in her home. There was no sign of her pointed hat, also seemingly in deference to arriving in a Muggle home.  
  
"Hullo," Harry muttered, avoiding both professors' gazes.  
  
"That should be, 'Hello, sir' and 'Hello, ma'am,'" Snape immediately insisted, his oily voice quickly grating on Harry's nerves. "Even more preferable would be if you noted our titles as your professors, Student Potter."  
  
"Professor Snape, please," McGonagall replied, a firm quiet voice barely hinting at dissatisfaction. "This is...more of a social visit than anything else. We are guests in this home and should behave as such."  
  
Snape muttered his response, low enough so that all Harry heard was "insolent brat."  
  
McGonagall turned to her left, nodding toward a mortified and fretful Aunt Petunia. "I would like to say you have a very nice home here, Mrs. Dursley."  
  
Amazingly, Harry's aunt changed from fretful to fuming, as though angered that a witch would show good manners. With a huff, Aunt Petunia turned and hurried into the kitchen where a series of loud plate-clanging noises quickly emanated.  
  
"Student Potter," Snape continued, using the word 'student' like a sword. He was clearly showing off his disdain for Harry right in front of Uncle Vernon, still hovering near the stairwell. "You must be aware of what happened today."  
  
"You mean the Dementor attacks," Harry replied, knowing full well that Vernon could hear that. He wasn't about to whisper for some reason.  
  
"The what?" Uncle Vernon turned nearly as pale as Tonks had. "Those... things that attacked my boy? What's this all about?"  
  
"Do not interrupt." Snape didn't look up, locking his stare onto Harry.  
  
"Now hold on here! This is my house and..."  
  
Snape glared right at Uncle Vernon. The larger, older man paused for a second, obviously scared, then a sort of grim resolve passed over his brow. He got as close as he could, right up to Snape's pointed nose, and glowered right back. "This is my house. You do not talk to me like that at all or I will THROW YOU OUT!"  
  
Snape stood his ground and glowered back down at the shorter man. If he was startled by a Muggle talking back to him in such manner, he didn't show it. Harry glanced between the two, wondering if Snape would even dare to try magic, as an adult he could get away with it...  
  
"Excuse me," McGonagall interrupted, loudly placing her biscuit's tin container onto the coffee table in front of her. "Mr. Dursley, there have been attacks by those creatures throughout the country, and we have reason to believe your nephew may have information about it."  
  
Uncle Vernon didn't turn away from Snape, their staredown contest being of higher importance in his mind, but still he had to answer what that other...witch said. "What the bloody hell would this boy know about those monsters, unless he had something to do with it?"  
  
"It would be so simple and nice if he was involved," Snape replied coolly, not blinking in the slightest. "But he is not. If you mind, try and listen, and perhaps learn, what precisely is going on."  
  
"Harry, please," McGonagall spoke to the teen, getting his attention. "Tell us, did your scar hurt?"  
  
Harry blinked. "No, it didn't."  
  
McGonagall tried glancing up to Snape, but he was still locked in staring down Vernon. She sighed and looked back to Harry. "What about those visions you get? Like the time you witnessed the attack on Arthur Weasley? Did you see anything?"  
  
Thoughts started forming in Harry's head, none of them pleasant. "No. Oh, no. I didn't see a thing. That's not good, is it?"  
  
"What is he blabbering about?" Vernon finally tore away from Snape, glaring first at McGonagall and settling his sight on Harry. "Visions? You get visions, boy?"  
  
"You weren't told about the scar," Snape noted rather placidly. "Or perhaps you forgot. Muggles usually can't keep track of this sort of thing."  
  
Vernon turned immediately to glower some more at Snape, but the oily professor had turned and moved slowly across the room toward the fireplace. With a swift turn that usually worked best in his dark Hogwarts robes, Snape dramatically presented himself for a speech. "The Dark Lord's attack on your nephew Potter left that noticeable scar, but with that scar came some powers. One of these powers was an ability to sense the Dark Lord's presence, to in fact see events occurring around his nemesis. Through his very eyes, in fact."  
  
"If I may," McGonagall interrupted, leaving Snape hanging with a disappointed grimace on his lips. "Harry, the time Mr. Weasley was attacked, when you thought you had become the snake that bit him, it wasn't that you were witnessing it through a snake controlled by... by You Know Who, you see the snake WAS him."  
  
Harry took a moment. "He's an unregistered Animagus, isn't he?"  
  
"Of course," Snape sneered. "He is not about to advertise what he can and cannot do."  
  
"So I can see..." Harry rolled it about in his head. "Can he see through my eyes too?"  
  
"Yes," Snape answered. "The connection works both ways. Or it did. It seems he has successfully cut you off."  
  
Harry stood silent, glancing briefly at McGonagall before lowering his eyes in thought. "All right then. What does this mean?"  
  
"For now, we're not sure." McGonagall's face showed concern. "The rules are very different regarding you and him, Potter. It could be that as he's using his talents at Occlumency to prevent you from learning his plans, he's also preventing himself from learning yours. But there is a possibility You-Know-Who can also use his talents at Legilimency at the same time to read your thoughts without revealing his own. Your mind is still at considerable risk."  
  
Harry breathed faster, his head swirling with disagreeable thoughts. He realized he now knew the Prophecy as Dumbledore told it to him, and that Voldemort could see that. Voldemort would know about the Latitalisman protecting his location, that he would know about the protections placed on the Dursleys' home, he would know the secret passage from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts that would allow him to sneak into the castle without warning.  
  
He also realized something else, a nasty terrible thought that hurt as he glanced towards Snape, who glowered back with his penetrating stare. "I'm going to have to learn Occlumency again, don't I?"  
  
Snape sneered, his pale face twisting into something like a grin. "You didn't necessarily learn it the first time, did you Student Potter?"  
  
Harry turned away, avoiding his stare, seething with resentment that he was going to have another miserable summer, only this time with the worst possible teacher he could ever have.  
  
"But it should be known that I will be unavailable to provide your lessons, Student Potter." Snape appeared relaxed and almost happy as Harry quickly turned toward him, stunned. "My responsibilities elsewhere will make it...difficult for me to travel here on a regular basis."  
  
"Now hold on here!" Uncle Vernon shouted, his face turning brick red. "What the devil..."  
  
"I am still working, with great concern and subtlety, especially as the Death Eaters leadership is in flux, so I will be unable to pass on my vast knowledge and skill in helping you finally get this talent under control," Snape continued, ignoring Vernon's gasping protest. "We shall see if your next teacher will be at all effective in...what is your problem, sir?"  
  
Vernon had grabbed Snape by the lapels of his business suit and with a surprising display of strength lifted the oily professor a few inches off the ground. "NOW...YOU...LISTEN!"  
  
"Gentlemen, please!" McGonagall stood, rather wobbly, worrying Harry that she had not fully recovered from the near-fatal attack she received toward the end of last school year. Another gasp in the background caught Harry's attention as he spied Aunt Petunia backing away into the kitchen, away from the startling conflict.  
  
Snape glanced down at Vernon's puffy hands, then glanced up with a slight tilt to his head, before quietly rising higher into the air. Uncle Vernon slowly rose with him, his feet dangling a few inches off the floor. "Did you wish to get my attention, sir?"  
  
Uncle Vernon didn't notice he was floating in mid-air. "Let me tell you about magic, you freakish pointed-nose good-for-nothing! I don't want it in my house! I've had enough of it already! Shall I tell you how much of it I've had? I've been swamped in an avalanche of posts! Owls at all hours flying about! I've had a car attack the second floor! Flying cakes! My dear sister turned into a balloon by this boy! My chimney exploded thanks to you lot! My boy's had both a tail that needed surgery and a tongue that nearly choked him to death! And those bloody soul-sucking beast things nearly killed him last year! I do not want any more damage inflicted in my home because of DAMN...BLOODY...MAGIC!!!"  
  
Snape smiled slightly. "Fine then, please let go."  
  
Uncle Vernon pushed Snape away as he let go of the suit, only to find himself falling quickly to the ground, collapsing under his own prodigious weight onto the nearby furniture. "Bloody Hell!"  
  
Snape remained floating, glaring down at this Muggle who dared to threaten him harm. "I should tell you that without additional training, your nephew Potter will be vulnerable to attack, and by extension so will you and your family. You already know that Potter must stay here at your home for a considerable amount of time so that the protections from the Dark Lord can remain in place, so he cannot leave for school now and he must learn here. You should also know that very little physical damage will occur in the type of lessons he will need for Occlumency and so..."  
  
"I don't care!" Uncle Vernon pushed himself back onto his feet. "No magic! Here in MY house!"  
  
"Gentlemen, I think we can make arrangements for Harry to learn elsewhere." McGonagall swept past Harry to stand between the two men. "Mr. Dursley, I can recommend that another location, one nearby where Headmaster Dumbledore has been keeping an eye on Harry's protection, can be used to..."  
  
"YOU'VE BEEN SPYING ON US?" Aunt Petunia gasped this from the kitchen, using her own powers of espionage to hear what McGonagall had said. She stormed into the living room like a startled scarecrow, vivid. "If there's a safehouse nearby why didn't you send this...child there? Instead of forcing him on us?"  
  
Uncle Vernon seethed at McGonagall, mostly because he couldn't keep his head up to glare at Snape.  
  
McGonagall blinked calmly. "You very well know, Mrs. Dursley, that Harry's protection crosses over to family. Dumbledore has reminded you on this, and that his safety, and yours, are linked to this being his home."  
  
She turned to face Vernon, who found himself stepping back slightly from the sheer force of McGonagall's stare. "He needs only a few hours a day to go to this safehouse to take his lessons there, then return home to retain the protections needed. You won't have magic in your house, sir, as long as Harry learns what he needs to learn."  
  
Uncle Vernon glowered at both professors, especially as Snape lowered himself back to the floor. McGonagall added one last word to her argument: "Please."  
  
"Bloody Hell," Vernon muttered, turning away. He turned back after a thought. "And nothing gets broken in my house."  
  
"We can assure you," Snape noted softly, "that the only thing that could get broken is the boy's head."  
  
"Have a care, Professor," McGonagall snarled back at him.  
  
Uncle Vernon shook for a few moments, thinking it through. Finally, through clenched teeth and a wave of his hand toward the front door, "Show them out, boy. They'll tell you when you get started on your...lessons."  
  
Snape hurried to the door on his own. McGonagall smiled, nodded at both of Harry's relatives, then snapped her fingers at her purse. It flew to her side, looping around her waiting arm. "I do thank you. Again, it's a lovely home, hope you have a good evening."  
  
She turned and walked slowly toward the door, then turned with another thought. "You will lift this...grounding of Harry so he can go outside, will you?"  
  
Uncle Vernon snarled just like one of his sister's dogs.  
  
"Professor," Harry whispered as he walked with McGonagall to the front door. "Just who will be teaching me if Snape isn't available?"  
  
"We'll find someone by tomorrow," she smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder to keep her steady. "Don't you worry. There's more than enough Aurors and wizards with the Order who ought to find time to teach Occlumency to you."  
  
Snape had already disappeared into the dark of night past the front porch. McGonagall stepped out, turned and nodded to Harry before folding in on herself, quickly Apparating to wherever she needed to go.  
  
Harry closed the front door and walked back into the living room. Uncle Vernon turned quickly and snarled, "Back to your room, boy! You're not off the hook with me just yet!"  
  
Harry stormed quickly up the stairs, not noticing if his cousin Dudley was sneaking a peek to see if he could come out of hiding. Harry slammed the door shut to his room, taking a moment to breathe, just before noticing a series of pecking noises coming from the window.  
  
Sliding the window open, Harry ducked as a small ball of feathers flew past him, bouncing off the far wall. It was Pig, Ron's tiny and excitable owl, carrying a message. Pig finally landed on Harry's desk, where he untied the note from the bird's leg. Wondering if Ron had already answered back so quickly, he unfolded the paper and saw instead the handwriting of Ron's little sister Ginny. It read:  
  
Harry!  
  
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Luna just told me! Wow! WOW!!!  
  
Write more later.  
  
P.S. Ron's off to France with Hermione. Just in case he didn't tell you.  
  
P.S.S. Percy's still a git.  
  
P.S.S.S. How many of these P.S. things can we add to a note? Anyway, Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!  
  
Sighing, he folded up the note and watched as Pig dove into Hedwig's bird feeder. "What a day," he groaned, before heading to bed.  
  
Chapter 6: The Lecture 


	6. Chapter Six: The Lecture

Chapter Six: The Lecture  
  
Author's Warning: this chapter contains a very bad lecture that all boys and girls get when they hit puberty. Anyone under the age of 12 should skip the lecture scene and wait until they're older. All others can read it and shake their heads whilst comparing it to the lectures they got when they were teens. Ah, youth...  
  
Harry's dream was odd, even by his standards. He was sitting in the fish and chips restaurant while Tonks was failing miserably at teaching him Occlumency. The Sorting Hat kept interrupting her lessons as it sat on Harry's head, informing him he couldn't be sorted into any of the Four Houses and so was going to be sent to the kitchens. Snape appeared in his normal black robes and announced that Tonks had officially broken Harry's head. "We'll need to replace it," Snape intoned, lifting up Harry's old head and putting a new one atop his neck.  
  
Harry saw in the shop window's reflection that his head was now Neville Longbottom's, and he insisted that Snape take this head back to the original owner. Snape shook his head and added, "He doesn't need it anymore, ever since the Dark Lord found out from your old head that he was the true threat all along."  
  
Harry kept insisting that Neville needed his head back, and turned to Tonks to ask her help. Instead Luna was standing there with a hand-sized beetle-like insect with elongated blue butterfly wings sitting on her shoulder. "Oh, isn't this great Neville?" she sighed. "I knew you could help me find the Winodyrs!"  
  
Harry woke up, nearly falling out his bed. "Bloody Winodyrs," he grumbled, before sitting up too quickly and bumping his head against the low-hanging bookshelf.  
  
Breakfast was spent with much heated debate between Vernon and Petunia, and with extensive worrying within Harry. Dudley spent it eating.  
  
Petunia kept guessing which of the neighbors had to be spying wizards, bouncing from one suspicious household to another. At the moment, she was fixated on the Hallisaxons that lived three streets down. "It's them, I tell you. Has to be. I've seen that wife of his, Andie, oh, let me tell you she has no sense of fashion or taste at all. And him! Cost Accountant, my foot! Just what IS a Cost Accountant, anyway?"  
  
Vernon gulped down his glass of juice before diving into the one plate-sized pancake allowed to each family member (except Harry, who got a pancake the size of a casino chip) as they were all stuck on Dudley's diet for another year. "If you ask me, the children are the key to figuring it out. Parents are usually clever enough to fake being normal. Children though, like this hairmop right here, they act odd 'cause they don't know any better. So what you've got to do, Petunia, give it some time to lull them..."  
  
Harry tuned out their prattling, unwilling to give up the secret that Mrs. Figg was the neighborhood spy. They had asked him that before he was allowed to sit down at the table, Aunt Petunia insisting he tell the truth about any wizards or witches living in their perfectly normal community.  
  
"I don't know of any wizard or witch who lives here," he said, and it was the truth, since Figg was by definition a Squib, a wizard-born who knows and can perceive the world of magic but lacked the talents to perform any.  
  
That didn't satisfy his relatives, who glared at him before starting off on their meal-long rant against suspected families. And it didn't interest Harry, who worried over who his Occlumency teacher would be.  
  
Odds were it was Moody. Who else but the ultimate paranoid Auror would be trained in the art of protecting his own head from intrusions? Harry wouldn't mind too much, he was familiar with Moody's teaching abilities, albeit through an imposter who more than likely acted as much like Moody as possible. He did worry, though, that he was going to show up at the door, wild eye and all, and give both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia the shock of their lives.  
  
Harry had finished his meal, which wasn't much, but sat at the table waiting. Dudley glanced at him once or twice as he finished off one grapefruit and move on to his second, but said nothing. Aunt Petunia had moved away from the Hallisaxons and had settled on the Van Blundhts over on Thicket Lane for having traveled from America but still claiming to be Dutch, "Like that ever happens!"  
  
The doorbell's ring caught everyone by surprise. Dudley sat in mid-chew, grapefruit juice dribbling out of the corner of his pursed mouth. Aunt Petunia sat in silence, one hand raised to her neck. Uncle Vernon glanced nervously at the door before shooting Harry his patented Evil Eye with Squint Emphasis. "I can't believe they found you a tutor that quickly, boy."  
  
With a huff, Uncle Vernon stood from the table and waddled cautiously to the front door. Since he was taking so long, whoever was waiting at the door knocked five times. "Hold your horses!" Vernon shouted, before taking another minute to get there.  
  
Harry couldn't see where he was sitting, but he could hear the conversation in the foyer once the door opened. "Who the... Wait, I've seen you before, haven't I?" queried Uncle Vernon.  
  
"Why, yes, I've seen you at the train station, when you were picking up Harry from Hogwarts. You're his uncle, Uncle Vernon Dursley I take it? My husband has told me all about you and your lovely home."  
  
Eyes wide with shock, Harry rushed to his feet and hurried around the corner into the hallway. "Mrs. WEASLEY?!"  
  
Mrs. Molly Weasley, mother of Harry's closest friend Ron, as well as the twins Fred and George, as well as Ron's older brothers Bill, Charlie and Percy, not to mention young Ginny, smiled back at Harry's stunned expression. "Well, hello, Harry. You're looking splendid this morning. I hope you've had a good breakfast already, I'd like to get started on your training as soon as possible." She turned and smiled at Uncle Vernon. "I do hope that's alright with you and the missus."  
  
"You're a teacher?" Uncle Vernon gasped, which was just what Harry wanted to ask her as well.  
  
"Well, I am an expert on what Harry here needs to learn, so I said I would be delighted to help out. Especially since I'm someone he knows and trusts. Isn't that right, dear?"  
  
Harry nodded slightly, still in shock.  
  
Uncle Vernon scowled. "Oh, if only I could ask to see your certificate qualifying you to teach."  
  
Mrs. Weasley frowned at his slight, but glanced quickly at Harry and thought better of it. "Harry, be a dear and get your things, you know, the things you'll need for the lessons."  
  
Harry nodded quietly and rushed up the stairs to his bedroom. Grabbing his wand, he then slid his Latitalisman belt around his pants securing it in place. He grabbed his bookbag, containing scrolls, quills and ink in case he needed to make notes, then double-checked his pockets as he thought about other things he'd need.  
  
Pig had woken from his morning snooze in Hedwig's cage, having borrowed it for the night, and excited in seeing an open passageway he sped out of the bedroom doorway. A quick "Bloody owl!" exclamation from Uncle Vernon caught Harry's attention, realizing he really didn't have anything else to take with him. He turned and hurried back down the stairs.  
  
Uncle Vernon shot him one last Evil Eye. "You'd best not embarrass this household, boy," he grumbled, doing his best to make sure Mrs. Weasley didn't hear him.  
  
Harry sadly shook his head and rushed out the front door, closing it behind him as he walked up to where Mrs. Weasley stood. She was staring up into the sky, watching her son's small owl zoom off into the distance, most likely heading back to the Burrow, official home of the Weasley clan.   
  
"Ready to go dear?"  
  
"Uh, I suppose." Harry glanced at her. "Uh, I didn't know...um."  
  
"Harry." Mrs. Weasley smiled warmly, keeping her voice low. "You know perfectly well I'm a witch. Just because I'm a housewife doesn't mean I don't know what do to with magic."  
  
Harry felt sheepish, but smiled. "Yeah, you're right. It's just that Snape and Dumbledore make this big deal out of Occlumency being a difficult form of magic to learn."  
  
"Well, it is. That and learning to be a Legilimens, which I am by the way." She sighed, walking slowly down the sidewalk in a direction away from where they needed to go. It seemed they were taking the scenic route to Mrs. Figg's place. "It helps to know one when you learn the other. And I had to be a Legilimens, trust me. When you've got boys like my twins, you need every trick in the book you can learn to keep them in line."  
  
Harry tried not to laugh too loud at that. She was right, of course, her sons Fred and George were a handful, professional pranksters for as long as Harry had known them, and he was witness to many an incident where those two tried to sneak past their always-worried mother regarding their plans to wreak havoc at Hogwarts or their hopes to open that magic joke shop. Her being a Legilimens, a Truth-reader of sorts that can spot a lie a mile away, was perhaps the best weapon she had in keeping them from going too far, and probably explained how she caught wind of some of their sneakiest plots.  
  
"Now, of the two, I'll be teaching you Occlumency," Mrs. Weasley noted as they passed by the neighborhood park. "It's slightly easier to learn, and according to Professor Dumbledore you need only to learn the defensive aspects, to protect your mind."  
  
"So I'm not going to become a Legilimens?" Harry seemed slightly disappointed.  
  
"Well, that depends on how good you become with this, Harry." She sighed. "Besides, do you really want to poke your nose into other people's heads?"  
  
"Well, no, but..."  
  
"Ah, the infamous 'No but'. Harry, let's just focus on getting you level up on Occlumency, all right then?"  
  
Harry had been to Mrs. Figg's house before, when he was younger and well before he learned of his destiny within the Wizarding world. He had hated it then, but for some reason having learned that Figg was, and is, an ally of sorts after last year somehow made this visit rather enjoyable. Then as now, though, he was overwhelmed by the number of cats that existed within such a tiny abode.  
  
Under three of those cats, on the living room sofa, sat a familiar figure. Ginny Weasley grinned as she saw Harry enter the room, still rubbing the ears of a contented white-with-black-spots tabby. "Harry! Have you met Page here?"  
  
"Yeah, actually." Harry smiled down at the cat in her lap. Page was a tiny kitten last he saw her, the year that Mrs. Figg suffered her broken leg. The cat sitting along Ginny's shoulder was Ashley, who loved to get to one side of your head to affectionately nibble your earlobe. The third cat, resting next to Page, was the fat orange tabby Motsly, who meowed loudly upon seeing Harry, but then again she meowed loudly to anyone who listened. Mr. Tibbles, yet another cat, came up to Harry for a leg rub and a tail wag. Some of the others were absent. Harry knew Mrs. Figg employed them as watchers.  
  
"Harry, we'll get set up in the kitchen." Mrs. Weasley winked. "I tend to do my best work in there."  
  
Mrs. Figg hobbled out from the kitchen, holding a tray of lemon squares. "Ah, here Molly, have a bite, before the kittens get into them. And Harry, hello. Heard you had a rough year, didn't have much of a chance to speak to you after that Wizengamot hearing, but still have a square, child."  
  
Harry and Ginny both grabbed a lemon square and bit in, taking a moment to chew and waiting for Mrs. Figg to move on to another part of her house. "So, Ginny," Harry whispered, trying to get a word in before his training. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?"  
  
"About Percy being a git?"  
  
"No, the other thing. You know, with Luna."  
  
Ginny grinned. "No, but can I? Mum would be so thrilled to know. And Dad. And my brothers, and the newspapers and the..."  
  
"Ginny!" Harry hissed a little too loud. "Please. Don't make a big deal out of it. She just wants to see a movie. She's a friend."  
  
"Okay." Ron's little sister said that rather off-handedly, giving Harry the feeling she did want to make a big deal out of it.  
  
"Anyway, why is Percy a git? Doesn't he know he made a mistake about believing the Ministry's stories about me and Dumbledore, now that everyone knows Voldemort is back?"  
  
Ginny's face frowned, not from hearing the Dark Lord's name (which terrifies almost every other wizard) but from Harry's question. "I wouldn't know. We still haven't heard from him. In fact, we've only heard about the..."  
  
"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley's voice echoed from the kitchen. "Let's go!"  
  
"Now," Mrs. Weasley turned formal in her stance and voice once Harry entered the kitchen. "From what I've gathered from Professor Snape, you've gotten an idea that Occlumens need to remain calm and focused, that you need to control your emotions and in that way control your thoughts."  
  
"Yeah, but I wasn't any good at it." Harry sighed this.  
  
"I'm thinking you may have jumped a little too far ahead, forcing you to repel a direct Legilimens assault without building up to it. I think we ought to try learning just how you can tell there's a Legilimens sifting your mind, give you the warning signs and making sure you can prepare yourself properly." Mrs. Weasley moved to the kitchen table, standing opposite from Harry. "Alright, let's get your wand out and your mind ready, shall we?"  
  
"Okay." Harry dropped his bag and pulled out his wand, then paused. "Uh, Mrs. Weasley, um, did you need to do something first?"  
  
She lowered her wand. "Such as?"  
  
"Well, did you want to put your thoughts into your Pensieve before we do this?"  
  
"Why should I? Oh, did Professor Snape show you that? Well, I suppose he had certain...thoughts you shouldn't be seeing. You may have learned that when you're performing the Occlumens defense that you could reverse the Legilimens attack and read his mind. I don't think we'll go that far today, I just want to get you warmed up." Mrs. Weasley raised her wand again. "Besides, those Pensieves cost a shiny sickle."  
  
"Oh." Harry raised his wand. "Okay, ready."  
  
Mrs. Weasley didn't do much except lock her eyes onto Harry's, which he knew was important for a Legilimens to pull off the mind-reading. But even then, she didn't utter the spell nor wave her wand. The seconds ticked away on Mrs. Figg's clock, shaped like the grinning Cheshire Cat, hanging overhead the sink. Harry noted the sounds of the ticks, blinked a few times, wondering if he should keep staring back at Mrs. Weasley or if he ought to...  
  
And then he noticed it, a push. A twitch, actually, of a muscle behind his left ear. Or was it a muscle? It felt like it was inside his brain. There. Another twitch, more pronounced, slightly lower inside his skull. Along with it came a mental flash of the time when he was eight years old and it was raining...no, the thought was gone now. But the flash of memory, even brief, felt just like... Another twitch in his head, was it something about that trip to the zoo? It didn't feel right. Harry realized this was it, a Legilimens assault on his thoughts.  
  
He was about to shout "Protego!" when he remembered how this happened before, with him getting into Snape's head, and suddenly worried about entering Mrs. Weasley's head. He paused, he didn't want to look in on her bad memories...  
  
This time a full-fledged flash of memory came up, watching Professor Quirrell unwrap his turban revealing another face, remembering the fear of realization that this was Voldemort, still alive, still enraged...  
  
Harry struggled in his mind, not noticing the world around him, not even sure if he was still staring back at Mrs. Weasley, and another memory came up, that train ride with Crookshanks looking like he was planning to have rat for dinner, and the train falling into darkness as the cold grip of a Dementor surrounded everything...  
  
Harry felt the floor with his hand, having dropped his wand at some point. His other hand gripped the table next to him. Sweat dripped from his forehead. "Sorry... Sorry..."  
  
Mrs. Weasley had taken a seat at the table, waiting for Harry to straighten himself up. "Harry, dear, I should have told you, you need to fight back. You were hesitating, weren't you?"  
  
He had picked up his wand and placed it on the table before him. "I...I didn't want to hurt you. I was worried."  
  
"My being hurt doesn't compare to you being hurt when You-Know-Know attacks. Well, let's see." Mrs. Weasley thought it over. "I suppose I should note that effective Occlumency involves not so much thinking as it does feeling. You steel yourself emotionally, that is what you need to control. Don't think. If you think, it brings up your thoughts and memories rather easily for a Legilimens to sort through. Once you're a proper Occlumens, then you can think and not worry about betraying yourself."  
  
"So I clear my mind?"  
  
She chuckled. "Not entirely. Just don't focus on anything in your head. Focus on your feelings, on your mood. Focus on being happy, or concerned, or amiable, or sad. Let's try that. Once you get the emotions under control, you might be able to control your thoughts properly too."  
  
Harry nodded. She stood up, gesturing he do the same. "Now, let's try it again, shall we?"  
  
The rest of the morning was spent with Harry and Mrs. Weasley working on the Occlumens lesson. In between breathers (whenever Harry had collapsed from the ordeal), Harry noticed Ginny hovering in the background, working with Mrs. Figg's cats on something, which he learned later was an energetic round of cat hockey using a balled-up newspaper page.  
  
Around lunchtime, Mrs. Weasley called for a meal break. So while she and Mrs. Figg worked on getting sandwiches made, Harry and Ginny worked to a far corner of the house so they could talk. Or more exactly, go over the news. "Mrs. Figg walked in with it during your training. Here," Ginny whispered, passing over the Daily Prophet, tapping on the front page, "can you believe what happened?"  
  
Harry glanced at the cover, already expecting the paper to focus on the Dementor attacks from yesterday. But he was surprised to see the photo of the day's biggest hero. "Neville?"  
  
Harry kept reading the major storyline, under the headline DAY OF ATTACKS END WITH HERO STUDENT:  
  
Dementor attacks, just weeks after the creatures' abandonment of their duties as guards of Azkaban, occurred throughout the country at fifty major populated areas yesterday, threatening the safety of hundreds of wizards and thousands of Muggles who were unaware of the attacks as they took place. Sadly, eight Muggles lost their lives during the attack that took place in East Birmingham. Nine wizards (including one Magic Enforcement officer, Thansen Fenwick) and 42 Muggles across the country were taken to St. Mungo's for medical treatment.   
  
Perhaps the most surprising good news from the series of attacks has been the effective response of many in the wizarding community that assisted in the repelling of the Dementors before more harm occurred, especially in the case of the young wizard Neville Longbottom, age 15, who used a Patronus spell to distract the Dementor attacking Lancashire long enough for Aurors to arrive and finish it off.  
  
Longbottom's Patronus was a lion and by all accounts fully corporeal, an incredible feat for a student finishing fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  
  
"We were impressed once we got there," noted Auror Kingsley Shaklebolt. "Most seventh year students can't form a corporeal Patronus and this boy's done an incredible job of it. From what I've heard, there's only one other student his age able to do this, and that's Harry Potter."  
  
Longbottom is a fellow student with the Boy Who Lived, rumored to have taught fellow Hogwarts students such defensive weapons as the Patronus spell this past school year. He is also the only child of Frank and Alice Longbottom, who were among the best-known families to have fought against You-Know-Who during his first wave of terror nearly fourteen years ago.  
  
Neville Longbottom refused to comment and his legal guardian, his grandmother, has also declined to comment. His uncle Algernon was all too eager to comment and his statements can be found on pages 8 through 12. Reports that the Ministry of Magic is preparing an award in recognition of his effort cannot be confirmed at this time.  
  
In other locations, the Dementor attacks were repulsed by...  
  
Harry finished reading the article to focus on the picture accompanying it. Neville was prominent in the left corner, but didn't look at all happy about the attention he was getting. He kept glancing down and shuffling his feet, and looked as though he wanted to jump off the page altogether to hide somewhere else. The rest of the photo included Shaklebolt, who was trying to praise Neville who didn't look up in his direction, and another Auror holding up an empty hooded rag suggesting a Dementor long departed.  
  
A part of Harry felt disappointed that Neville wasn't as happy for the recognition and honors being heaped upon him. But he knew Neville, even when his courage was up he never had the kind of confidence to think of himself as good as other students. It took a lot of coaxing the first year just to get him to stand up to Draco's bullying, and it took Lupin for Neville to work out his fears regarding Snape (and his own grandmother). And when they met Luna for the first time on the train last autumn, he called himself a 'nobody' and it took Ginny to speak up for him.  
  
And regarding fame, well, Harry knew that all too well, people gawking at his scar, Lockhart using him for photo ops, and Skeeter dragging him and everyone else through the mud. Honestly, he didn't want to wish it on anybody.  
  
And regarding Luna, Harry kicked himself mentally realizing he had just thought of her, and that he wanted to ask Ginny for...for...well, let's face it, he needed all the help he could get. "Ginny, this is good news about Neville, but I wanted to talk to you about something else."  
  
"I know. Luna." Ginny grinned at him, but it was a relaxing smile, not jittery or overeager, like when she was younger and had a crush on Harry. Her dating other boys seemed to have helped her get over him. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!"  
  
"Well, yeah, you wrote that earlier..."  
  
"Oh, she told me all about it," Ginny kept grinning. "Meeting at the mall, looking for her dad, Mexican flavored fish and chips, and you! Asking her out to the cinema! Whatever that is. Sounds WONDERFUL!"  
  
"Well, I got the feeling she was dropping a few hints about doing all of that." Harry sighed. "It's just..."  
  
Ginny's grin faded. "Oh, no."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Harry!" Ginny punched him, not harshly, on his shoulder. "Don't you dare back out of this!"  
  
Harry flinched and stepped back a bit. "Backing out of what? Wait. I'm just saying, there might be problems. With...going out next Friday. I don't think I..."  
  
"You ARE backing out!"  
  
"No! I might be grounded!" Harry snarled quietly, he didn't want to escalate this into a shouting match. "Unless I can get back in touch with Tonks to have her cover for me again, but I don't know if she'd want to, because yesterday things happened while I was gone and my uncle's right mad at me and...and I'm in enough trouble as is."  
  
"But you shouldn't be grounded anymore," Ginny whispered, noticing that Mrs. Figg had poked her head through the kitchen door wondering about the near-shouting going on. "Didn't Lupin and Mad-Eye impress upon your uncle to let you enjoy life while you live it?"  
  
"Uncle Vernon's too angry to care."  
  
Ginny crossed her arms, using a glare he recognized from Hermione's repertoire. "So you're going to use this as an excuse to break the date."  
  
"Well, no, I'm just saying there might be...well...I'm just..."   
  
"Are you nervous?"  
  
"Yes." Suddenly Harry felt his head clear. That wasn't so hard. "How could you tell?"  
  
Ginny sighed and eye-rolled, just like Hermione. "Boys."  
  
Harry got defensive. "What about you girls? Giggling and plotting, and talking about one thing instead of another, and crying and getting all emotional, and not telling us about it, and Luna was acting all funny, and she WAS setting me up, wasn't she, and..."  
  
"Harry!" Ginny grimaced. "Let me just tell you something."  
  
"Alright."  
  
"She likes you. There. It's out in the open for you. Satisfied?"  
  
"Well, yeah, no, I mean." He shrugged, giving it a lot of thought. "I mean, it helps that I know that and..."  
  
"Do you like her?"  
  
"Yeah." But all of a sudden that gut-sucking black hole feeling returned to Harry. "But I mean, not like that, not as a girlfriend, if that's what you mean..."  
  
"Why, is something wrong with her?"  
  
"No!" Harry stopped, checking his voice. "She's nice. And yeah, maybe her weird behavior was off-putting when I first met her, but so what, I've seen odd behavior from a lot of other people, and I like them too, and Luna's okay now that I know her and all."  
  
"So then why are you nervous?"  
  
Harry scowled at Ginny, wondering how she, a year younger than him, could be more knowledgeable about all this stuff. "I don't want her to be a girlfriend, just a, just a friend, if that's okay..."  
  
She sighed again. "That didn't really answer the..."  
  
Harry answered. "I don't want to make a mess of it. There. Satisfied?"  
  
Ginny answered only with an unhappy look on her face.  
  
"The stuff I went through with Cho, and I...alright, I LIKED her. I really liked Cho and...I wanted to be happy with her. But the times I had with her, it was like...I didn't know what I was doing, and it upset her, and she kept crying all the time, and acting funny, and..."  
  
"Well, that's not entirely your fault," Ginny finally noted. "Some of it had to do with...what happened to Cedric, didn't it? And some of it was because you're still just a boy and Cho wasn't patient with you picking up on the hints. And a lot of it has to do with her being a total airhead."  
  
Harry shot her a look, Cho wasn't THAT bad, but Ginny continued. "But Luna's different. She really really likes you, and she's patient, and..."  
  
"...And I'd like to just let this be a first date, just a friendly date and let it go at that, okay?" Harry finished for her. "Let me just, let's not rush this and make it more than what it is, okay?"  
  
Ginny sighed one more time. "So you're still going on the date, though?"  
  
"Yeah, I will." Harry took a moment. "So, what exactly should I do on the date then?"  
  
Mrs. Weasley interrupted Ginny's eye-roll to end all eye-rolls. "Dears, we're done with the sandwiches. Let's make a quick lunch and then do a few more hours training, alright with you, Harry?"  
  
Ginny joined up for the walk back with her mother and Harry to 4 Privet Drive: she wanted to see Harry's home and see if the Muggles were as bad as Ron and the twins had said over the last four years ever since the infamous flying car rescue attempt. She just simply couldn't believe anybody could be that bad-tempered.  
  
"And mind you, I've seen Draco at his worst," Ginny giggled, "and he's all bluster."  
  
"I dunno," Harry whispered back, not wanting Mrs. Weasley to hear him say bad things about his relatives, "Dursley did as much taunting, and before I found out about...all this, he was pretty violent when backing up his taunts. At least my cousin got his own hands dirty, Draco has to hide behind his bodyguards all the time."  
  
"But your uncle, and your aunt," Ginny noted.  
  
"At best, they don't care." Harry sighed, puffing upward at his hair. He needed a haircut soon, although past experience proved there was NOTHING that could fix that bit always sticking up in the back. "At worst, they yell at me, blame me for everything up to and including natural disasters, and make me regret not growing up as a grocery clerk in Leonardo, New Jersey."  
  
"Harry, dear, is that your cousin then?" Mrs. Weasley pointed to a large lumpish shape in the distance.  
  
Harry squinted, focusing his vision. "Yeah. Not surprising we're still five blocks off from home. In another three years you can spot him in orbit just like the Great Wall of China."  
  
Ginny couldn't help but giggle, while her mother scoldingly stared at both of them. As they got closer, Harry could spot Piers, sitting atop a fancy new bicycle, a Fender Fortis 3-speed terrain bike, probably stolen from some other kid since it wasn't in Piers favorite color. Dudley and Piers stared back at the approaching witches and wizard, both giggling themselves. While Dudley most likely never told his partner in crime the exact nature of Harry's oddness, he more than likely created elaborate embarrassing tales that Piers would easily accept as the truth.  
  
"Be prepared for not-so-witty banter," Harry whispered to Ginny, "just think of Draco being worse than what you're about to get..."  
  
"Hello, dears," Mrs. Weasley loudly greeted the two boys in the Dursleys' front yard. "Are your parents home? I just wanted to tell them that the lessons with Harry went well and that I'd like to schedule more lessons next week."  
  
Piers kept giggling, while Dudley paused a moment to glance over at Ginny. After giving her the once-over, he glared at Harry with malicious glee. "Who's this, Potty? Your little wittle girlfriend?"  
  
Dudley tried to bend over to laugh harder, but his gut kept getting in the way. Mrs. Weasley, slightly shocked, stood there waiting for the boys to behave better. Ginny arched an eyebrow and loudly answered, "No I am not Harry's girlfriend. Did you hear me? I'm not his girlfriend. Luna is."  
  
The laughter stopped. If he was a Metamorphmagus, Harry's jaw would have dropped past his knees. And if having Dudley and Piers hearing that, what made it worse was Mrs. Weasley hearing that, as she turned to Ginny and Harry with great shock. "My goodness, did you say Luna? Keeley's little daughter. Harry! Why didn't you say something!"  
  
For Harry, another second later the whole thing dropped below 'Worse' into 'Mind-boggling Horrific' as Uncle Vernon came storming through the open garage door. "What's this? What's all this? A girlfriend? Who's got a bloody girlfriend?"  
  
"It's...Harry," Dudley answered his father, fighting back another fit of laughter. "Some little...thing called Luna."  
  
"Luna is not a thing, she's a girl," Ginny answered loudly, defiantly. "She's a fellow student at..."  
  
"Not another word, little girl," Uncle Vernon growled.  
  
"Excuse me, SIR, do not talk to my daughter that way," Mrs. Weasley growled in response.  
  
Uncle Vernon glanced worriedly at her, then glared evilly at Harry. "Is this true, boy? You went at got yourself a girlfriend?"  
  
Harry felt, he knew it in his bones, that this wasn't the Most Embarrassing Moment of His Entire Life, but that it was bound to be in the Top 5 All-Time list. After shooting Ginny a quick scowl, he faced his uncle and sighed. "She's someone I know. I...I went and scheduled a date with her. Next Friday. I didn't want to bother you with it."  
  
"Bother me? BOTHER ME?!" Uncle Vernon's face turned red, almost purple if you looked from the proper angle for it. "Well I'm bothered now about it, aren't I? Get in the house!"  
  
Harry glanced nervously at Mrs. Weasley, who definitely was shocked by the level of anger in Vernon's behavior. "I said, NOW, boy!" his uncle insisted.  
  
Harry walked past both his uncle and his cousin, who had a vicious grin on his face. Uncle Vernon showed no such smile, especially when he glared down at his own son. "And you too, Dudley! Get inside!"  
  
Dudley's grin faded. "What? Daddy! What did I do?"  
  
"I said get inside! I want to have a talk. Right now! Go!"  
  
Dudley stood as quick as he could, which took a minute, before he waddled quickly through the front door. Uncle Vernon followed, not even glancing back at the Weasleys standing on the sidewalk. He slammed shut the front door, then walked slowly into the living room where both Dudley and Harry were standing. "Sit. Down. The both of you."  
  
Dudley shot Harry an evil look, knowing it was his fault he was getting treated like this by his own father, who had normally treated him like a king until now. They sat on opposite ends of the sofa, while Uncle Vernon stood before them, looking down deep in thought.  
  
"All right then," Uncle Vernon muttered to himself, working up the nerve as he paced past the fireplace. "All right. Sex." He spoke louder. "Boys, it's time I told you about sex."  
  
Harry's stomach disappeared from view. Oh no. He had heard about this. He had been warned. He and Dudley were going to get it. They were going to get the Lecture.  
  
It was Dean who warned them, back in the week leading up to the Yule Ball during the Triwizard tourney. "It was my dad, well my parents knew that Hogwarts was co-education, that there'd be girls here, so before second year started he sat me down and gave me the sex lecture."  
  
"Why would he go and do that?" Ron asked.  
  
Dean shrugged. "Parents are like that. They worry, I suppose, so they warn you about stuff."  
  
"So what was the lecture all about?" Seamus spoke up.  
  
Another shrug from Dean. "Eh, when I look back on it, it was pretty silly. Dad went on about being careful around girls, not to get too excited or eager, stuff like that. He kinda went into, uh, the mechanics of it, that's what he called it, didn't make it sound so hot. I think he was trying to scare me into not doing it."  
  
"Is it scary?" Neville's turn, and he appeared scared just asking that.  
  
"What, sex?" Dean chuckled at that one. "Well, I haven't gotten that far, just snogging, that's about it."  
  
"Snogging?"  
  
Harry answered that one. "Fancy Muggle word for kissing, Ron. And Dean, someone we know?"  
  
"Oh, right, like I'm telling you?"  
  
"Why not, you're the one mentioning it."  
  
Seamus smirked. "Eh, I saw 'im, last year in fact, whashername, Mariah Maccibee, older girl from Hufflepuff."  
  
Dean looked embarrassed. "Well, anyway, not really seeing her now. Bad breakup. Anyway, about the Lecture? Don't be surprised if you lads be getting it any time soon. And trust me, it'll be the dullest saddest half-hour of your lives..."  
  
"Now then, sex." Uncle Vernon was working up his nerve some more. "All right. Sex is a messy, disgusting physical act. Sex is...it's the sharing of bodily fluids and sweat and hard work. It's like lifting furniture or taking the garbage out to the street for pickup. And for what? To feel good? Orgasms. Ohhh, you'll hear about orgasms. But it's not worth the trouble, believe me."  
  
Dudley and Harry both glanced at each other with raised, worried eyebrows. It WAS going to be a bad lecture from start to finish.  
  
"Sex is vastly overrated, lads. It's not worth the trouble because you know what'll really happen? Eh, do you?! I'll tell you! You'll get diseases, that's what! Diseases and illnesses the likes of which would scare the hardiest of men! Or worse! You'll get the poor girl pregnant! Yeah! That's what happens with sex! All for what, a few minutes of fumbling in the back seat of a car!"  
  
Dudley whimpered. Harry wanted to hide under the sofa until it was over.  
  
Vernon pursed his lips, thinking it over some more before he turned to face his son. "Now, my boy, I know I'm sounding harsh. But I want to make it clear to you. I'm only doing what's best. I know full well that a fine upstanding manly specimen as yourself is going to have those young lasses throwing themselves at your feet, but believe me, Dudley, it's best you know the temptations, and it's best you resist them. At least until your own your own two feet with a good job and a good roof over your head. Then you can have the pick of the lot of them, and you won't be sorry that you waited, me boy."  
  
"Now, you!" Vernon pointed frighteningly at Harry. "I don't know how the likes of you could get a girl to like you, all skin and bones and mess of hair if you ask me, but still you'll need to hear this. And listen good, boy! If I see you so much as hold hands with a girl, I'll throw you out of the house and to Hell with the consequences. And if you get a girl pregnant I SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF. You know what? Better idea. Just to make sure. NO GIRLFRIENDS FOR YOU. Ever!"  
  
There were five sharp knocks at the door. Uncle Vernon ignored them. "You are back to being grounded, Harry! No days out, no going anywhere! You can do these...damn lessons with this ditzy woman, but that's it! There is no way..."  
  
The knocks became louder and more insistent. "I. Am. Not. Answering. The bloody door!" shouted Uncle Vernon.  
  
"Would you prefer I blast the door off its hinges then?"  
  
Uncle Vernon shook like a steam engine about to explode. He rushed to the door and swung it wide open. "You, dear lady, have nothing to say about how I raise my children! Is that clear?"  
  
"What is clear," Mrs. Weasley noted in the voice reserved exclusively for dealing with a certain set of troublemaking twins, "is that you are not genuinely concerned about Harry's welfare and happiness. And that if you don't show any kindness or love, what you'll get..."  
  
"Is what, a cake dumped on my head?" Uncle Vernon sneered. "There's nothing the boy can do to me, I know that very much, and there's nothing you can say about it, or are you the type of...witch that goes out of her way to hurt people, hmm?"  
  
Mrs. Weasley raised her head slightly, as Harry realized Uncle Vernon guessed right, that she wasn't the type to back up threats with action, at least not with non-family members. Then she answered, "I'm not, but Remus Lupin might."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Remus, James' old friend from school. He's maintained an interest in Harry's welfare, being an old family friend and werewolf, and he's not above talking with the likes of you. So perhaps when he gets the time, he can stop by and discuss it with you properly, man to wolf."  
  
Uncle Vernon turned pale. "Did you say werewolf?"  
  
Mrs. Weasley nodded ever so slowly. "Ah, yes. But he is a busy one, doing a lot of work for the Order, mind you, so the best time he could make it would be evenings. Hopefully that won't be too late for you, would it?"  
  
He turned an even whiter shade. "You wouldn't dare."  
  
"If you dare to make Harry unhappy, I would dare to tell Remus. And him, he's not one to challenge a dare with, believe me."  
  
Uncle Vernon resumed being red about the face and collar.  
  
"So Harry's not grounded, and he can go on dates with any girl he likes, are we understood?"  
  
Uncle Vernon grumbled something, something about the trouble boys and girls can find themselves in.  
  
"If you're worried about his behavior, fine. We'll send him out with chaperones, just to make sure he behaves. I will guarantee you, on my word as a parent myself, that the chaperones will keep a close eye and make sure no one gets pregnant. Satisfied?"  
  
More grumbling, but one of the grumbled words sounded like "Fine."  
  
Mrs. Weasley smiled and leaned in through the doorway. "Harry, Monday morning then, I'll come by to pick you up for another session. So I'll see you then. My, my, you are growing up so fast! And Luna Lovegood! Oh, I am SO thrilled to hear this, my dear!"  
  
As she turned to leave, Ginny stuck her head in through the door. "See Harry, your family's not so bad! See you later! Bye!"  
  
Chapter Seven: Chaperones In Love 


	7. Chapter Seven: Chaperones In Love

Chapter Seven - Chaperones in Love  
  
Harry couldn't sleep. Even wearied from the day-long Occlumency training, he was too stressed, too embarrassed from dealing with the public revelation that he was going on a date with Luna Lovegood.  
  
Some of it had to do with Uncle Vernon's reaction, veering from paranoia to outright hostility, as he had indulged in another hour's worth of warnings, threats, and total lies regarding the whole sex thing. They had to be lies, Harry mused, some of the things his uncle described just couldn't possibly be real, not so much violating the rules of biology but also the rules of physics. Some of those things couldn't happen even with the aid of magic...maybe...nah, they couldn't happen...  
  
A lot of it had to do with Harry's fear of how the Wizarding world would react once word got out. If Neville loathed the attention he was getting for stopping a Dementor, he never had to deal with a lifetime's worth of full-blown celebrity status the way Harry had. Even in his early childhood years of exile, everyone involved in magic knew his name and recognized his scar. And the past two years he's had to deal with over-hyped media coverage, starting with Rita Skeeter's horrific embellishments during the Triwizard Tournament, right up to the accusations of insanity and glory seeking of the past year. That meeting with Hermione, Luna and Skeeter on Valentine's Day, where Skeeter practically foamed at the mouth when his date with Cho was mentioned, reminded Harry that the press would be just as rabid in digging up his social life.  
  
They'll go crazy when they hear about this, Harry groaned inwardly. Mrs. Weasley's heart is in the right place, I know she means well, but that look on her face, she was so thrilled to hear about it, she's bound to talk to others like it's good news. Even Ginny couldn't keep it under her hat.  
  
And Luna! Harry tossed to the other side of his bed, flopping the pillow over his face. Her dad OWNS a paper, the Quibbler. She's had to tell her father about the date, and what are the odds he'd resist the temptation to plaster it all over the celebrity gossip columns, just next to the Page Three Veela?  
  
So Harry kept tossing about, kicking off the bedsheets, and wondering if Hedwig would show up soon so he could write Hagrid about where his hiding cave is so he could move there for about a month.  
  
Sunday was worse. Uncle Vernon had, of course, told Aunt Petunia about Harry's date and after recovering from her fainting, she insisted they go to church. All of them. Harry had never been to church, he reasoned when he was younger that it was the Dursleys not wanting to admit they were related, but after the whole wizard issue came to light he realized they were worried his presence would cause them to be struck by lightning. Which Harry found odd, since his textbooks on magical History conclusively proved that Divine Retribution toward Muggles was due to poor hygiene and the overuse of artificial turf in sports.   
  
Nothing like falling brimstone or a plague of toads happened, even though they arrived an hour before regular morning services were held and Harry sat there in full view of the sainted stain glass windows. Uncle Vernon tried to speak with the bishop before the sermon, asking then begging then demanding that the sermon focus on abstinence, lust, sin, and scaring teenage boys into never having sex for the rest of their lives. Thankfully the pastor stuck with his original topic of being charitable and neighborly, which naturally cheesed off the Dursleys to no end.  
  
Harry didn't pay too much attention to the sermon, though. He learned something about churches that Muggles apparently could never sense: he learned that the figures in the stain glass windows moved and talked much like the portraits at Hogwarts and elsewhere in the Wizarding world. He was dazzled to watch St. Jerome get into a lively discussion with St. Lawrence about the catering the church was scheduling for an upcoming feast. Some of the other stain glass windows slowly realized they were being watched, and gave Harry friendly greetings when he looked their way.  
  
"It's been awhile since we've had a wizard stop by for services," St. Julian noted. "Nice to have you, young man."  
  
Harry couldn't really answer back, being surrounded by unaware Muggles, so he gave a quick nod that Uncle Vernon spotted and took for twitchiness. "Can't sit still in this place, you little heretic?" he hissed with a twisted angry gleam in his eye.  
  
Monday came, and Harry had another sleepless night to shake off. Today was it, the Daily Prophet was going to have his social life back up on Page One, he just knew it. He had realized last night that the deal Hermione struck with Skeeter, forcing the reporter to keep quiet for a full year, no longer applied. He had an image of Skeeter in her illegal Animagus form, skittering about on beetle legs atop the presses, watching each page fly out with Harry and Luna's names encircled with heart shapes...  
  
Breakfast was quiet. Dudley, for some reason, had asked his mother for just one grapefruit this time, no eggs, no toast, just a grapefruit, and he asked for it. And Harry swore it smelled like his cousin had finally taken a morning shower, by the fact there was no smell at all.  
  
Uncle Vernon had cleared out earlier, not wanting to be present when Mrs. Weasley came to retrieve Harry, leaving it to Aunt Petunia to shoot angry stares at the other woman as she came to the door. "Ready to go, Harry?"  
  
Harry's walk with her went quietly. At least at his end. Mrs. Weasley attempted about five questions regarding the how and the why and the when and the where surrounding the Date With Luna Grand Event. Finally she realized Harry was too embarrassed to say anything about it and stopped. The fifth question, for the record, was if Harry was going to get a haircut.  
  
Only Mrs. Figg and her cats greeted them as they arrived at her house. This time, instead of guiding Harry to the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley escorted him to Mrs. Figg's fireplace. "This is connected to the Floo Network, dear," Mrs. Weasley smiled, "we got the Ministry to connect it, we knew your relatives were not keen on having their fireplace as a gateway, this is if you needed to get anywhere. Especially helpful until you learn Apparating."  
  
Harry stared at her, unsettled just a bit. "We're travelling somewhere? Through the Floo?"  
  
"Yes, to my home." Mrs. Weasley picked up some powder from a cat-shaped bowl on the counter and dumped a good amount into Harry's hands. "This time it should be easier than getting to Diagon Alley, it's hard to mispronounce the old Weasleys' residence. Do it like before, dear, and say aloud 'the Burrow!' Shouldn't be any trouble at all."  
  
Harry followed her instructions and stepped into the green flame. Like before, he spun in and about the flames as they grew darker, then brighter as he found himself sliding feet first into the Weasley's living room. His feet, in fact, slid right into Bill Weasley's legs as he sat in the nearby recliner glancing over papers covered with red, green and gold ink.  
  
Harry's sneakers didn't leave much damage on Bill's dragon-skin boots, but it got Bill's attention as he spilled his Gringotts paperwork all over the teen. "Ah, this is what I get for not paying attention," the eldest Weasley sibling groaned, struggling to round up every parchment across the floor. "But I wasn't expecting you to be here...better get out of the way, Harry, mum's coming through any second now..."  
  
Harry kicked some of the paperwork out of the way as he stood up, just in time as Mrs. Weasley came hopping out of the large green flame into her home, landing on her feet. Harry wanted to find out how exactly you do that, otherwise every other Floo trip would end on his end.  
  
"Here we are, oh, Bill, it's so nice you're greeting us here, give me a minute Harry, I've got to get things set up for the lessons." Mrs. Weasley spun about, talking faster than she could move, somehow energized into doing fifty different things at once.  
  
"It's you," Bill noticed with a grin when Harry shot him a worrying glance. "Mum's all aflutter when she heard about you and Luna."  
  
"Oh, yeah, that," Harry did his best to sound deflated, hoping to avoid the topic.  
  
"Well, it's a distraction for her, especially since...well, you've seen today's Prophet yet?"  
  
Harry shook his head. He was dreading this.  
  
"Oh, ah." Bill finished getting all his papers back in a manageable pile. "Lemme get today's paper then. Here it is."  
  
Harry glanced at the front page. There were more reports about the aftermath of the Dementor attacks, with the Ministry worrying that "You-Know-Who may have been distracting us from another objective," something about getting giants back inside England. He kept flipping the pages, scanning for the society gossip columns, not seeing much of anything about him or Luna. He wasn't too sure what he was looking for.  
  
"Right there, you just passed it," Bill pushed a finger into the page that Harry just flipped over.  
  
Harry glanced back. He spotted a basic news blurb (REPAIRS OF KHAZAD-DUM BRIDGE DELAYED ANOTHER MONTH), then saw what Bill was pointing at: the Weddings and Engagements column.  
  
"What the...? Percy's getting married?" Two familiar faces, Percy Weasley and his long-time girlfriend Penelope Clearwater, beamed from the accompanying photo, although Percy's seemed a bit forced. The engagement had apparently been on for some time but had just been announced, with a November wedding schedule and gift registry set with Titania's of Diagon Alley.  
  
"Yeah," Bill answered, placing his scrolls onto a nearby table. "It's been on for some time, and we didn't even know about it. He proposed the day she got back from her studies in America, with that transreligious organization she's a part of."  
  
"You didn't know?" Harry paused. "That would explain why Ginny still calls him a git. But still, how did you find out?"  
  
"From her. Penelope's a good girl, really, she did get along well with mum and dad once Percy mentioned they were steady a few years back. She's upset with Percy for his refusal to speak to us again, to speak to dad mostly, even though they're still at the Ministry..."  
  
"Harry," Mrs. Weasley's voice echoed out from the kitchen. "I'm almost ready, dear, get your wand handy..."  
  
"Anyway," Bill continued, speaking faster, "Penelope's been trying to get Percy to apologize, mum's been trying to get our dad to apologize too, but they're stubborn, the both of them. And I have to admit, it'd be nice if we could get them to talk, to let up on the hostility, because until then I can't really...well..."  
  
"Harry, dear! Let's get started, shall we?" Mrs. Weasley's insistent voice cut off Bill in mid-rant, and with a shrug Harry hurried off to the kitchen.  
  
The Occlumens training went a little better for Harry this time, his head didn't feel as drained so quickly, and he felt encouraged by how easier it was for him to retain his sense of location while unwanted memories and thoughts threatened to overwhelm his perceptions.  
  
There was one instance where Harry felt he slipped up, when he reacted too harshly at a direct Legilimens assault that Mrs. Weasley piled onto him before lunch break. He threw his wand out with a Protego spell, only to find himself performing the reaction thought readings into Mrs. Weasley's head.  
  
All of a sudden, Harry was embarrassed to see things from her memories, as he witnessed her standing in the same kitchen years earlier, trying to comfort a thin, scratched-up young boy with a broken set of glasses who cried about his younger brothers breaking his Quidditch broom during a family game while a young, earring-less Bill kept pointing out the poor boy had broken his own broom flying into a shrub; another image of that same boy, slightly older, returning back from a Hogwarts Express train ride trying to hide his tears as a set of young freckled-face twins bounced about with glee; it was her son's happiest day, flashing the Head Boy badge that just slid out of the annual Hogwarts letter; he was standing in the distance with a curly-haired young woman, trying to kiss out near the large pond in the moonlight thinking that no one was watching them...  
  
Harry broke off the connection as quickly as he could, and the two of them stood there quietly for a full minute. It was awkward. Harry knew exactly what was on Mrs. Weasley's mind, and mixed in with his shame at having entered her thoughts was a desire to do what he could to find Percy and slap some sense into him that his poor mother couldn't keep anything else on her mind but her most cherished son.  
  
"Ah, well, very good Harry," the Weasley matriarch finally spoke. "You need to maintain an aggressive defense with your Occlumency skills, helps you maintain that edge you'll need in your...well, I shouldn't be thinking that..."  
  
"Mrs. Weasley," Harry whispered. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Oh, posh." With a wave of her wand, the kitchen table sitting between them rattled a bit as plates and serving trays move about. "Nothing to apologize over, dear. Besides, it's time for lunch. Take a break, go see if you can find Bill and warn him I'm serving cold cuts today."  
  
Harry nodded and hurried out of the kitchen. He realized that Bill was no longer at the fireplace, he had probably gone upstairs to one of the bedrooms, so Harry hurried up the stairs. It was when he got to the second that he noticed how quiet it was in the Burrow. His previous visits were when the Weasley children were here, the ones he knew like Ron and Percy and the twins and Ginny, and even more so that summer of the World Cup when Bill and Charlie visited, there was activity here, a bustling, constant talking, things exploding in the twins' bedroom. And now, it was all quiet. Not even the ghoul in the attic made any of its customary banging and rattling. Harry stood for a moment and measured the silence, of what it must be like for a large family to have all its children growing up and going away...  
  
He searched the halls and bedrooms. Ron was nowhere to be seen, most likely off in France still visiting with Hermione. Fred and George's bedroom had been completely emptied out. Percy's door was locked, even an Alohomora spell didn't open it. Ginny wasn't in her room, Harry wondering for a moment where she went to. Two extra doors opened into nothingness, possibly Bill and Charlie's old bedrooms long removed, which explained why they had to shift bed assignments during the World Cup get-together. There weren't any other places in the upper floors that looked like office space, so Harry went back downstairs and looked outside.  
  
Harry found Bill under a large oak tree along a rock wall well past the pond that seemingly bordered the Burrow's property line. And Bill wasn't alone, there was a long-legged young woman with silken hair (so blonde it was nearly white) sitting with him, rather closely with him. Harry knew her instantly: Fleur Delacour. Bill's girlfriend. He was apparently teaching her proper English diction.  
  
"The rains...in Spain...falls mainly...on the plains." Harry could hear the grin in Bill's voice.  
  
"Why zhould I zay that, when I 'ave never been to Spahn?" Fleur giggled for some reason.  
  
"Perhaps I should take you there, then, for the honeymoon. Barcelona can give you an incredible view of the Mediterranean..."  
  
"Oh, Beell, 'ow romantic." Fleur moved closer to Bill, almost sitting atop his lap...  
  
"Uh, guys?" Harry realized he was interrupting, but lunch was lunch. "Sorry if I'm interrupting..."  
  
Fleur screeched and quickly hopped up from where she was sitting, which apparently was painful for Bill because he curled up and uttered "ouch" about twelve times before struggling to stand up on his own. "Well, actually," Bill groaned through gritted teeth, "you are interrupting..."  
  
"Um, it's lunch time, your mom asked me to find you..."  
  
"Ah, food." Bill stood a little straighter, giving Fleur a quick smile. "I hope you can stay and eat with the family, Fleur, maybe this time mum's got something you can enjoy noshing on."  
  
"I zhoold 'ope zo, darling." She smiled at him and then at Harry. "'ello, excuze me, 'Hello, Harry,'" she struggled with getting the 'H' letter pronunciation. "I zee you 'ave, have grown a leettle zince I last saw you."  
  
Harry smiled and nodded back. If Bill was trying to improve her language skills, it didn't seem to be working, even though the pair were rather pleased somehow. Still, he wasn't going to make any comments on it.   
  
Harry followed the pair back to the Burrow, and he couldn't help but overhear the conversations the two kept as they walked. Some of it seemed rather embarrassingly personal, stuff he could never imagine saying to another, even with someone else nearby who could hear these things. Bill seemed to wax poetic at times, each of those moments followed by a girlish giggle out of Fleur. By the time they reached the door leading into the kitchen, Harry realized they were flirting, and shamelessly so.  
  
Should of taken notes, Harry mused to himself, wondering if any of it would be any good whenever he when hooked up with a girlfriend. He paused, then shook his head. C'mon, he thought, it's just a date. Just friends, that's all.  
  
Fleur seemed to enjoy the sandwiches that Mrs. Weasley put out for their lunch, although Harry vaguely remembered her and her fellow Beauxbatons students disrespectfully turning their noses up at Hogwarts food. He noticed, however, that her sandwich was mostly lettuce and carrot slices, which agreed apparently with Fleur's diet. Harry also noticed there were two additional plates set out for people who had yet to show up.  
  
"Go ahead and eat, I've sent an owl over to let them know about lunch," Mrs. Weasley smiled at Harry. "This is informal, it's good to have a large gathering at the table again..."  
  
Harry grabbed a section of the sandwich on his plate, nodding to Mrs. Weasley before biting down into the meal. It tasted pretty good, a standard good old fashioned lunchtime sandwich, with roast beef, a hint of mustard, some cranberry jam layered on top between lettuce strips, and he...  
  
"Hello, Harry Potter."  
  
Harry choked when he heard that dreamy voice behind him. With a downward cough, he cleared his pipes and glanced over his shoulder to look at Luna Lovegood.  
  
Luna looked a tad off from last Friday. Something different. Her hair seemed a bit shinier and slightly straighter. Her smile had a brighter shade of red to it, not lipstick like what Aunt Petunia layers onto her lips for the Dursleys' outgoing functions, but still some emphasis had been added. Her clothes were more, well, normal, not as tattered or frayed like he had seen before. And her necklace of butterbeer caps was gone.  
  
Her smile was warm, and for once she made direct eye contact with Harry. "I know that tastes good. Mrs. Weasley always made good sandwiches." Luna went and took a seat next to Fleur at the table, leaving the remaining chair between herself and Harry.  
  
Ginny rushed into the last chair, beaming at Harry briefly before grinning wickedly at her mother. "Hey, Harry. Guess where I've been!"  
  
"Um, seriously?" Harry was worried this was a trick question somehow.  
  
Luna answered it for him. "She stayed over with me last night. What did you call it, Mrs. Weasley? A slumber party?"  
  
"Not much of a party if it's just two, dear, not unless you invited more people over." Ginny's mother paused for a moment before glaring at the two girls. "You didn't invite more people over, did you?"  
  
"No, mum," Ginny groused, grabbing a piece of her sandwich and chewing down rather excitedly. "Hmm was juff mhe nn Luna."  
  
"Dad was there," Luna added, finishing her bite of food before talking. "He's still getting plans together for the Sweden expedition, and it's looking rather exciting."  
  
"Oh, that sounds nice dear." Mrs. Weasley nodded in the direction of Fleur. "Luna, I'm not sure we've introduced you to Bill's friend here, she's..."  
  
"I know her. Her school sat at the Ravenclaw table for the Triwizard competitions." Luna glared rather listlessly at the part-Veela girl. "You're Fleur Delacour, Beauxbatons champion."  
  
Fleur smiled. "Ah, yes. I remember you."  
  
"And I remember you. You laughed at my necklace," Luna noted, no anger or bitterness, merely stating a fact, which still had the effect of making the lunch table a very uncomfortable place to be at the moment.  
  
"Ah, Harry," Mrs. Weasley spoke up, breaking the awkward moment, "so you and Luna have that...cinema to go to this Friday, still."  
  
"Well, yeah." Harry's black hole returned to its regular spot in his stomach. He needed to read an anatomy book just so he could specifically map that spot and declare a quarantine around it. "I need to double check the hours it's showing, I think we..."  
  
He glanced at Luna, who was looking directly at him again, with a odd smile he never noticed before, not as forced as he'd seen just a moment ago, and not really creeping him out like he thought it would. But it was a warm smile, almost reminding him of the smiles Cho gave him before...before... "Luna?"  
  
"Yes, Harry?"  
  
"We...we agreed on something around six, right?"  
  
"Whenever you want to go, Harry," she smiled, and the smile was getting warmer and more comforting in Harry's eyes.  
  
Harry blinked, then faced Mrs. Weasley. "I think around six. Is that alright?"  
  
"I think that's fine, Harry," Bill interrupted, tapping the table with a hand. "Me and mum's talked about it, said your uncle insists on a chaperone, so if it's alright with you the plan right now is that Fleur and I join you for the movie."  
  
Harry gave it some thought. As far as escorts go, Bill was ideal: certainly the coolest-looking of the Weasley boys, hanging out with him wasn't bad at all. He certainly wouldn't be as publicly embarrassing as Fred, who goofed off all the times Harry had seen him with Angelina, although now he thought about it he never really saw them that much at the Yule Ball. Having Ron along would be odd, unless he found someone as a date to join in. Going by himself would have been...sad. Harry was slightly surprised Mrs. Weasley wasn't lining up Ginny to bring along Dean on the double date, but he realized that would have made HIM the chaperone, and the Weasley matriarch did promise someone responsible would be an escort for Harry and Luna's date...  
  
"I'm okay, Luna are you okay with that?" Harry glanced at her, noting the just-revealed uncomfortable history between Luna and Fleur.  
  
She nodded calmly at Fleur, as though she had already forgotten what was said. "I am fine with it. Going as a group is fine. This is a very nice sandwich, Mrs. Weasley."  
  
The rest of the afternoon was rather hectic. While Harry continued his Occlumency lessons, he noted the distractions going on throughout the rest of the Burrow. Especially now that Ginny and Luna had arrived. While Bill and Fleur were elsewhere in the house being calm and quiet, the two young girls were giggling far too much and hopping back at forth between the fireplace and front window, where an ever circling deployment of small rather fake-looking post owls had suddenly appeared.  
  
"It's a new service, called O-mail," Ginny explained. It was all the rage, a brand new charm spell that transfigured toy owls into near-living facsimiles, which could then be used for swift, easily carried letter deliveries. The O-mail owls didn't just fly off, they Disapparated and Apparated just as soon as they received the letter or bound packet within their claws, something that real owls couldn't do. Luna and Ginny were testing the response time with their friends through the Floo Network, seeing if the letters got to the right place and how quickly it was done. Harry had noticed Dean's voice through the flames at one time, when Ginny's giggling was the loudest.  
  
"Ginny, dear, stop wasting the owls!" Mrs. Weasley shouted at one point. "We have to pay for a certain number of them and it's expensive to order extras! And you're tying up the Floo line!"  
  
Along with that, Harry felt increasingly uncomfortable during the Occlumens training, which had been improving earlier but was now slipping, especially every time Harry got the odd feeling that Luna was watching how he was doing.  
  
At one point, he did catch her doing it, and unlike when they were walking about Guildford and the Friary, where she was mostly glancing at him from the corner of her eyes, Luna was now staring right at him. And again, it wasn't spooky or unsettling, but genuinely caring. It was uncomfortable, though, because he couldn't focus. Mrs. Weasley finally had to shoo both girls outside of the house.  
  
After the training wrapped up for the day, Bill popped up and waved Harry out toward the Burrow's garage. "Okay, so, I've got to ask you how you want to do the cinema then."  
  
"Well," Harry thought it over. "I was going to pay for the tickets for Luna and myself..."  
  
"Good, the gentlemanly thing do, but Harry, how to get there? This is in Guildford, right?"  
  
Harry scratched his head. "Well, we can't get there by broom, people will see us..."  
  
"We could go by Floo Powder, but that gets too messy," Bill grinned, "and we ought to look nice on our dates, Harry. I know Fleur wouldn't want to get soot all over her..."  
  
"Oh, yeah, about earlier," Harry looked embarrassed just bringing this up. "I kinda overheard you two at the tree, that you're getting married too?"  
  
Bill sighed, genuinely sad. "Not now, not with the whole Percy situation. I'm worried if I go and propose to Fleur, it'll look like I was competing with him, trying to bump him from view from the folks. No, I have to wait now, but I'm doing what I can regarding Percy. I dunno, I think hitting him with a trout freshly fished out of the Thames ought to whack some sense into him..."  
  
He waved at Fleur, who was coming out of the Burrow and walking towards them. She flashed Bill a familiar kind of smile, although...on her it looked different. Just before Fleur got close enough to hug Bill, he slapped himself in the forehead. "Of course!"  
  
"Are you alright, Beell?" Fleur looked concerned as she wrapped her arms about her boyfriend.  
  
"I've just remembered something," he grinned, keeping his eyes locked on the Weasley's garage. "But from...I'd have to see how quickly they can catch it...Harry, Hagrid's still the Groundskeeper at Hogwarts, right?"  
  
"Well, yeah."  
  
"Hang on. GINNY!" Bill's little sister poked her head around the corner of the house. "I need one of those O-mail owls now!"  
  
Ginny shrugged, picked one of the toy owl figures floating about her head and with a good flick of her finger tapped it in her brother's direction. It zipped across the field so swiftly that a miniature sonic boom popped across the open area.  
  
Muttering something quickly, a small note and a quill appeared in Bill's hands. He scribbled a message, folded it, placed a large 'To: Hagrid @ hogwarts.uk.edu' on the front, and shoved it into the waiting claws of the O-mail owl. With a BANG it poofed into thin air.  
  
"Let it be a surprise," Bill grinned, both to a perplexed Harry and Fleur. With a large laugh, he scooped up Fleur into his long, powerful arms, and with her laughing uncontrollably he carried her back toward the other side of the large pond, to the large oak tree.  
  
Harry watched them hurry into the distance. "Is everything okay, Harry?"  
  
Harry was getting used to Luna sneaking up on him like that. "Luna, could I ask you something?"  
  
He turned to look at her, and she was again staring back at him, still smiling. "What's the question, Harry?"  
  
"Why did you change?"  
  
She blushed, which seemed odd for her. "What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean the clothes, the hair, you're not wearing your favorite necklace..."  
  
"What makes you think it's my favorite necklace?" Her blush had turned darker.  
  
"Because you always wear it."  
  
Luna's gaze turned away, back to her old habit of avoiding eye contact. "Maybe it was because Ginny warned me Fleur would be at lunch. I knew that she didn't like the idea of butterbeer caps as jewelry."  
  
"So who cares what she thinks?" Harry leaned over a bit, trying to re-establish eye contact with her. "I thought you didn't care about how other people thought about you."  
  
She sighed.  
  
"Well, at least I don't mind. That butterbeer necklace, it's you. And it looks nice on you."  
  
Luna smiled, a giggle almost escaped from her lips but she kept it in. She flashed a quick glance at Harry, then glanced away. "Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome." Harry glanced back at the Burrow, watching Ginny disappear quickly behind her corner of the house while Mrs. Weasley grinned and waved excitedly at the pair of teenagers. "Well, anyway, about the film. I think Bill's figuring out how to get us there."  
  
"That's nice."  
  
Mrs. Weasley kept waving at them. "I think I have to get going," Harry whispered.  
  
"That's nice."  
  
Harry gave Luna a look, who suddenly realized she had said something rather odd, even for her. "Oh, I mean, well I suppose I will see you tomorrow then?"  
  
"Yeah, tomorrow." Harry stood there, wondering if he should do something here. Maybe reach out for a handshake, or perhaps a quick hug, or...  
  
Luna stepped back slightly. "I need to go home as well. Perhaps I should send you an O-mail owl tonight?"  
  
"Ah, no." Harry felt bad. Really bad, for some reason. "My uncle's about one owl away from getting a rifle and a hunting license. Perhaps...I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
"Tomorrow then."  
  
"Yeah, tomorrow."  
  
For people who had to be getting somewhere, both Luna and Harry were having a hard time walking away. Finally, Harry took one step backward, then two, then Luna turned and walked down the road, presumably towards her father's house, then Harry took a few more steps towards the Burrow, both of them turning to face each other whenever they paused in their steps. Finally, Luna turned completely around and walked over a nearby hill, disappearing from Harry's view.  
  
Ginny somehow had gone inside the Burrow and was waiting for Harry when he stepped inside. "Honestly!"  
  
"What?" Harry lifted both hands in a defensive gesture. "What was I supposed to do? What?"  
  
"Boys!" Ginny got her eye-roll in for the day.  
  
"Virginia!" Mrs. Weasley poked her head from the kitchen. "Give it time!"  
  
Harry kept shrugging. "Give what time?"  
  
Ginny's mother arched an eyebrow. "Ah, well, Harry dear, like I said." She glanced at the clock showing the whereabouts of her family, spotting her husband Arthur's clock-hand moving from 'Work' to 'Local Pub'. "Oh, dear. Let's hurry you home, Harry, I've got another clueless boy to take care of..."  
  
Chapter Eight: Manuals 


	8. Chapter Eight: Manuals

Chapter Eight: Manuals  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I had just seen 'Peter Pan' in the theaters and they made a very big deal about Wendy's smile that I just couldn't overlook for the story, having made a big deal about Luna's smile in the previous chapter.  
  
Also, many cameos of Original Characters will be appearing in this chapter. Names and authors (from Fiction Alley) will be listed at the end of this chapter so I can make bloody sure y'all read through this...  
  
Harry slept well Monday night. His dream, as best he could remember, had him and Luna relaxing on a carved coral stone megalith rising above a calm lake. Other coral megaliths stood along the lake's shoreline, carved with symbols of planets atop each slab. She seemed happy, saying nothing, and he smiled...  
  
He was in such a good mood Tuesday morning he didn't mind the half-hearted taunts from Dudley, who wore deodorant for some reason and was caught reading his mother's copies of Cosmo, specifically the dating advice column. Aunt Petunia panicked, calling the nearest library to find out if they had more male-oriented dating advice resources, with the librarian calmly explaining where the books were and where to check them out. It didn't suit Aunt Petunia, who wanted the books delivered to her doorstep in plain brown wrapping, so that the neighbors wouldn't know. Dudley growled at Harry not to dare say anything embarrassing while she yelled over the phone, but Harry wasn't planning on doing that anyway. Nope, nothing was bothering him.  
  
About two hours into the Occlumens training at the Burrow, Harry was bothered by the fact that Luna hadn't shown up yet. Ginny had come and gone that morning for some reason, except that when she came back she was in a rather foul mood about something.  
  
"I can't believe her," was all Ginny would say when Harry asked about her mood. While Ginny paced about in the living room, he swore he heard her mutter something about getting Moaning Myrtle "to haunt her until she came back to her bloody senses."  
  
The excitement came about during lunchtime (which was calm without Fleur flirting with Bill and with Ginny growling under her breath about something) with the arrival of the Weasley's family owl Errol, an aging old bird whose landing technique had long been forgotten.  
  
The note on Errol's leg was for Bill, with Hagrid's handwriting all over it. Harry could tell because of the large, noticeably misspelled words in sloppy ink, which had gotten sloppier with Errol having landed on the deviled eggs. While Bill tried to hide the contents, Harry read Hagrid's apology:  
  
SORRY FOR THE DELAY. THA OWL THINGEE YOU USED CANT APARATE IN HOGWARTS, HAD TO PICK UP AT HOGSMEADE. WHAT YERE ASKIN FER IS STILL IN FOREST, BUT ITS HARD TA CATCH, COULD TAKE AWHILE. COULD BE TERMERROW AFORE I GET ROUND TO YER PLACE. FOUND YER OWL ERRAL WAITIN, HE AGGRED TO DELIVER FER YA. IF ELSE, SEND WIT HIM ANY ADITIONAL. SIGNED, AGRID.  
  
Mrs. Weasley cut off Occulems training about an hour after lunch, even though Harry was sure he had improved in defending his thoughts without invading back into hers. "It's not that, dear," she answered when he offered to keep going. "It's just you've got something else to do."  
  
"And what's that?"  
  
"Well, that would be getting you a haircut, obviously."  
  
Harry sighed. Well, he DID need one...  
  
The trip to Diagon Alley went better this time by Floo, and Harry landed in the appropriate place, which was a fireplace built into a corner next to Flourish and Botts. There was a book signing going on for a new author, a Margaret Darling-Cooke promoting a biography of her Muggle grandmother, and Harry caught a glimpse of a silver-haired matron standing next to a younger version of herself, the both of them with something perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner of their smiles that Harry had seen somewhere before. But he didn't have time to measure what he saw, Mrs. Weasley gently pushing himself and Ginny in the direction of the salon.  
  
Ms. Neaux ran the most popular hair styling and manicure salon in the Wizarding world: Harry spotted a handful of witches talking in Bulgarian under a set of beehives, while a Japanese wizard was arguing in forceful tones with a flustered young witch who looked like she was losing interest in being a barber. In the other corner, a wizard lifted his chin up to allow a pair of lynxes to gnaw at his whiskers, trimming them to exactly a half-inch off his skin. Magic scissors flew about both hairstylists and customers as they chatted about the weather, while fingernails were dipped into a purple liquid that seemingly turned said nails into a variety of colors.  
  
"Now," someone said, sweeping past Harry so quickly he couldn't identify who it was, just as he felt thin, powerful fingers grab at the unruly parts of his hair, "it's so obvious that this little gentleman is going to require a flat out buzz cut, this mop of a wig is fiendishly difficult to keep combed and...and...what's that on your forehead?"  
  
Harry sighed as his face was guided upward, those fingers sliding under his chin, forcing his gaze to lock onto a thin, wrinkle-free-yet-old-beyond-centuries face. Ms. Neaux was glancing between his nose and his forehead, and realized who it was. "Ye Lords, it's the famous Harry Potter!"  
  
The buzzing and chattering of the salon gave way to an excited explosion of voices, such that they blended into one. "He's here! He's getting a makeover! Harry Potter! Miss, miss, let me do his hair! No! Let me! How about his nails, I can do him right over here!"  
  
After two hours of preening and fawning that had his hair changed, cut, dyed and altered about five different ways before he finally got a simple haircut to clear the strands from his eyes, during which Ginny got a quiet hairstyling, Harry gave Mrs. Weasley an unhappy look. "Next time, just stick my head under a lawnmower, it's quicker and less of a fuss..."  
  
They stopped back at the Burrow before Mrs. Weasley planned on returning Harry to Privet Drive. Again, Harry felt disappointed that Luna wasn't there. He was pretty sure she said something yesterday about visiting, and he had been expecting her...and perhaps she had other things to do.  
  
He sighed and let it go. Fine. There's no need to work it all out of proportion, Harry mused. I can't believe I was getting that eager about it. It's just a date. Just to let Luna see what a film was all about. That's all.  
  
But he didn't notice how quickly he had gotten back to the Dursleys' abode, and absentmindedly overlooked that quick jolt in his nervous system when Mrs. Weasley noted, "We'll be doing this tomorrow, same as always now, Harry. See you in the morning."  
  
Wednesday morning found Dudley checking his weight on the scale, a dangerous prospect because of the potential damage involved, but amazingly the poor thing was able to withstand the 300-plus pounds being applied to it.  
  
Harry waited for Mrs. Weasley in the yard this morning. It had rained that night, and the morning air was like an autumn day. He spotted Aunt Petunia peeking out the window at them as they walked away, and Harry pitied her briefly, knowing his poor aunt was going to spend the day spying everywhere to see who in the neighborhood were filthy naughty wizards.  
  
The trip by Floo ended with another lousy landing by Harry, once again falling feet first out of the Burrow's fireplace...  
  
...right into the leg of a fifth year, perhaps now sixth year Ravenclaw girl he had never seen at the Weasleys' house before. "Ouch!" she cried out, jumping away from the fireplace. "Just give me a moment to clear out...oh, hi, Harry!" She quickly fell into giggles just like the four other girls standing near her.  
  
Harry gazed up, puzzled, slightly stunned, and with a growing sense of unease. There were girls here. Why?  
  
He shook his head and hurried out of the way, letting Mrs. Weasley pop out of her fireplace into the living room. "Oh, my, what the...? This is rather unusual. Excuse me, girls, are you friends of Ginny?"  
  
The girls giggled a bit more, and Harry blinked a few times to figure out who was witch, uh, which. He now remembered the Ravenclaw girl, Mandy Brocklehurst, from his hat sorting almost a lifetime ago. She was usually busy with her Portrait Preservation society back at Hogwarts. One of the other four girls looked like a younger, yet slightly taller version of herself, possibly Rhiannon her sister, same as Ginny's class. Of the remaining three, only one looked familiar to Harry as a third year, no wait now a fourth year student whose hat sorting he missed. The fourth girl he once spotted hanging about with Luna last year, a short skinny girl with dry dark brown hair. The fifth one was totally unknown to him. They all wore various shades of dark blue, usually meaning they were all Ravenclaw students.  
  
There was a screeching noise from near the stairwell, and Harry turned to watch a handful of other girls storm up to the bedrooms above before they could be spotted. "Uh, um, is Ginny doing something today?"  
  
As if in response, the front door of the Burrow swung right open, and Harry glanced over to see Ginny struggling her way into her own home, and the reason for her struggling was Luna Lovegood.  
  
Luna's hair had gone back to the slightly dirty, utterly wavy appearance of the week before. Her clothes still looked slightly nicer than the thread-worn stuff, but her necklace of butterbeer caps was back. Her face, usually composed and relaxed, was now contorted by her pursed lips and scowling eyebrows. Luna's expression lightened, however, the second she spotted Harry by the fireplace. "Hello, Harry P...ack!"  
  
Having lightened up also made it easier for Ginny to fling Luna practically straight up the stairs. "Grab her!" Ginny shouted up the stairwell, and a set of bodies stormed halfway down the steps as hands seized Luna, who still tried smiling at Harry while whacking away at the unwanted grabbers. Within three seconds she was gone.  
  
Ginny glanced at Harry as she rushed up the stairs. "Hi Harry! Bye Harry!"  
  
Behind her, through the doorway, came Natalie MacDonald, a younger Gryffindor girl and a friend of Ginny's, and one of Ginny's classmates, Christina. Harry remembered her, a short, constantly grouchy young girl who insisted Ginny (and everyone else) call her Chris. They both waved at Harry and giggled before hurrying up the stairs. Harry's head swirled a bit: that Chris was even capable of giggling would throw anyone's concept of a stable universe out the nearest window.  
  
Harry glared at Mandy. "What the h...excuse me, what is going on here?"  
  
The five Ravenclaw girls giggled uncontrollably and hurried up the stairs. Harry and Mrs. Weasley both sighed at once. "Harry," Mrs. Weasley added, "I'd best be taking care of the party then. Hope you've brought your homework."  
  
Harry kept clear away from the fireplace after three more girls arrived by Floo within an hour of his arriving at the Burrow. Each of them giggled just like the other girls when he was spotted, before they hurried up the stairs, most likely to Ginny's bedroom. It would remain quiet at times, but at other times a door would open and a loud wave of laughter and girly screams of delight would bounce around the entire house. Harry was pretty sure, given the competition, the ghoul in the attic had given up on making any noise itself and had left on holiday.  
  
He finally got an answer to the question that had been bugging him all morning when out of the fireplace arrived two very familiar young girls: Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones, both Hufflepuff and members of Dumbledore's Army. "Ah, Harry," Susan nodded, and was the first girl the entire morning not to break out into giggles. "Ginny said something about you being here for studies. How's it going?"  
  
"Pretty good." Harry closed up his Magical History textbook. "Now, what the bleep is going on around here?!"  
  
Hannah giggled, but Susan turned to shush her before glancing back at Harry with a perplexed look. "Oh. But you ought to know, shouldn't you? After all, you and Luna are going on that date this Friday, right?"  
  
Harry winced. "Oh, no. You mean, you all know about that?"  
  
"Well, maybe not the Slytherins, I don't think most of us are on good terms with the girls over there." Susan appeared concerned with Harry's reaction. "What, you wanted this kept quiet?"  
  
Harry flopped both hands onto his face, rubbing his forehead. "What are all you girls doing here?"  
  
Susan scowled. "Oh. That. Ginny sent us notes, asked us for support. She's trying to give Luna a makeover for your date. You didn't know that?"  
  
"No." Harry sunk in his seat, if he sunk any lower he would have fallen out of the chair. "This is embarrassing."  
  
Both Susan and Hannah glanced at each other, miffed expressions tipping their faces askew. "Boys," they chimed at once, and turned to hurry up the stairs.  
  
Hannah actually paused on the stairs, looking over the awning. "Look on the bright side, Harry, at least we haven't told the papers. Uh, yet."  
  
He groaned and fell out of the chair.  
  
So that what was happening with Luna and Ginny, Harry thought, having moved his chair out of the living room into a small corner of a conveniently placed broom closet. It's not like he wasn't used to hiding in such places, after all. But still, it explained why Luna looked, well, brighter that Monday she showed for lunch, and it explained why Ginny was upset for most of Tuesday.  
  
Why couldn't Ginny just let it go? Harry groaned inwardly, thumping his head slowly against a corner. It was just a date, a measly tiny little date out to the cinema, nothing romantic, just a date, just friends, that's all. He had half a mind to hurry up the stairs and burst into Ginny's bedroom, to tell all those girls to settle down, let it go, stop making such a damn bloody deal out of it, to tell Ginny to stop it, stop it altogether. He wondered if the threat of canceling the whole thing would get them to calm the bleep down.  
  
But that wouldn't be fair to Luna, his other half answered.  
  
But what's fair to me? groaned the first half.  
  
Luna wasn't making a big deal out of it, remember? She got rid of whatever it was Ginny had done and had gone back to her natural state of mind, like wearing her butterbeer caps. She was cool with it, and if you go making a mess of it now...  
  
But then she'll be cool if I did cancel it...  
  
Would she? Just how would a girl react if you did something like that?  
  
I don't care!  
  
Well, actually, yes you do.  
  
"Argh," Harry finally growled to himself. "Girls!..." There was one other thing that prevented him from heading upstairs to end all of this: it was the unsettling fear that he would actually make things more embarrassing, that he would be confronted by an endless chorus of giggles, that he would be struck dumb in horror by the very fact he didn't know what to bloody do in this situation.  
  
"Girls!" he groaned again. "Why hasn't Hermione finished writing that bloody book she ought to write about how they bloody behave!..."  
  
Harry kept banging his head slightly into the corner until a very heavy thudding throughout the Burrow shook him from his misery. It wasn't from upstairs, it was outside. It kept happening, like footsteps, only greater, an avalanche or an earthquake across the glen surrounding the Weasley abode. He hurried out of the closet and toward the nearest window, when a large shadowy shape stood between the sunlight and the house.  
  
"'Ello, 'Arry!" a booming friendly voice echoed everywhere. "That looks like er good haircut on ye."  
  
"Hagrid!" Harry noticed his friend, the Hogwarts groundskeeper, was casting a greater shadow than usual, and realized the half-giant was lifting something large across his shoulders. He hurried out the front door and watched Hagrid struggle with the item toward the Weasleys' garage. "I know that car!"  
  
Hagrid slid a very battered and rusty looking Ford Anglia from his broad shoulders onto the driveway. The years of living in the wilds of the dark Forbidden Forest had not been kind to the magical vehicle: the damage of the Whomping Willow had rusted into red streaks, while the back window had that branch-sized hole through it. Incriminating spider marks covered the dull turquoise coat everywhere, while the tires looked like they'd been punctured by more than one centaur arrow.  
  
"Did that thing ever run out of gas?" Harry muttered, giving the Weasley's long-lost transport a long inspection.  
  
"Oh, it took awhile to hunt this l'il baby down," Hagrid beamed, having succeeded where many repo men had failed, "but once I got it cornered it came real quiet like. So, Harry, I take it yer visiting with Ron then?"  
  
"Actually, no." Harry realized he hadn't seen Ron for a long while. His visit with Hermione was taking forever. And where was Hedwig, she should have been back by now too!... "Mrs. Weasley is helping me with...my studies."  
  
"Well, thas good." Hagrid glanced about. "Any chance you seen that Bill? It's his note I answered, I'd best speak with 'im about what he wants done..."  
  
Bill was found soon enough, once again curled up with his favorite Veela girl in the quietest place he could find: the attic (Harry was right about the ghoul going off on vacation after all). He and Fleur headed down to the driveway to inspect the ruined glory of the Ford Anglia.  
  
"Well," Fleur noted, after a full three minutes of total silence. "Eef this is your car, Beell, um, well, it'z um, well...it's blue."  
  
"Oh, Fleur, I know it looks bad now," Bill sighed, giving his girlfriend a warm hug, "but we'll get it up and running again for Friday's excursion, I promise."  
  
Once Fleur was satisfied she wasn't going to get rust all over her nice clothes and had scampered off to see about Mrs. Weasley's kitchen projects, Bill glanced over to Hagrid. "All right. Wait here. I helped dad a bit getting his car pulled apart and put back together, so I know where the repair manual's been stashed." He pointed to Harry. "You, you go get the oil cans and the grease. And Hagrid, go get the sledgehammer. We've got work to do."  
  
Repairs went right away once Bill returned with the manual. Harry noted the pages had been covered with odd symbols and graphs and lines of Celtic, one whole page on windshield wiper replacement totally retranslated into a mix of Latin and Aramaic: Mr. Weasley's notes on how he 'made his improvements' on a Muggle machine. "Hmm," Bill hummed as he flipped through a few pages. "Ah. I see. We're going to need our wands for this part."  
  
"What part?" Harry asked as he stood, wand at the ready.  
  
"Changing the oil," the tall Weasley answered, promptly sliding underneath the front of the Anglia.  
  
"Wait, aren't you going to need a bucket to catch the oil?" Harry knelt down as he spoke.  
  
Bill apparently hadn't waited. "Yeeaaaggghhhh!" came his reply.  
  
Harry glanced up at Hagrid, who nodded with understanding. "I'll go fetch ter mop an' bucket then..."  
  
Two hours later, and the car almost looked respectable. Harry had remembered the Reparo spell and had applied it to all of the cracked and shattered windows, although the gaping hole in the back took three tries. Hagrid had spotted a few root plants near a gnome hole, and quickly had made a compound of sorts that cleaned away the rust. Bill had gone through and checked the engine and the internal wiring, reapplying charms to the car's flying and invisibility functions. He also spotted a few missing parts here and there that would make the Anglia impossible to operate as an actual car, and so just before lunch he announced he was going to Apparate out to a Muggle shop for replacements.  
  
"Well, we'll hafta wait fer 'im to come back I reckon," Hagrid sighed, rolling back down his sleeves after washing off the anti-rust glop from the car and his hands. "Right 'bout lunchtime too, if ye ask me. Get cleaned up, Harry, let's go on in."  
  
Just then, a huge gale of laughter shook the Burrow such that Harry was convinced it was finally collapsing. Hagrid glanced a confused look at Harry. "What's going on in there? Sounds like Hermione and Ginny're throwing a party."  
  
"It's Ginny." Harry sighed. "She's gotten her friends together to help Luna Lovegood get made over for a date she's going on."  
  
"Luna Lovegood?" The half-giant gave that name some thought. "Oh yearh. Straggly haired Ravenclaw girl, keeps asking me about Crumpled-'orned Snorkack in the Care O' Magical Creatures classes."  
  
"Yeah, well, Hermione keeps telling her they aren't real, though." Harry smiled a bit.  
  
"Whaddaya mean, 'not real'?" Hagrid seemed both shocked and stunned. "They're as real as you or me, Harry. Sure, you don't really see much of them, endangered they are, very rare, it's that crumpling horn of theirs, hurts them more than it hurts us."  
  
Harry stood there, shocked himself. "But Hermione's never heard of them!"  
  
"Ah, well, poor Hermione. If it's not in her books she won't buy it." Hagrid nodded and leaned in to whisper. "They'd been taken off the lists ter keep 'em safe, so no one knows 'bout 'em. I do, it's my job ter know. Just between you and me, Harry."  
  
"All right then."  
  
"Now then, who's Luna going with? This date thing?"  
  
"Oh, that." Harry didn't want to say anything, but still. "The date thing, it's with me."  
  
"Oh. Ah." Hagrid seemed a bit flummoxed by that. He took a moment, then gently placed a meaty palm on Harry's shoulder. "Well, I don't know if it's my place ter say it, but I gotta make sure. You've gotten the Lecture yet?"  
  
Harry slapped his forehead. Again.  
  
"Oh. You've had. Good fer you, nice ter see you got outta it in one piece, Harry. Just remember ter be a gentleman at all times, and you'll do fine. And she's one o' those Dumbledore's Army students, whannit she?"  
  
"Yeah, she was."  
  
"Good, so yer know her, thas good. All right then. Glad we had this chat." Hagrid stood upright as though having accomplished a great deed. "Let's go eat then."  
  
They got as far as the front door leading into the living room when two large shapes and one small one, all three covered in soot, collapsed out of the fireplace. "Oh, no, not more of them," Harry groaned, wondering just how many girls were invited by Ginny to the makeover.  
  
"How many more of them for what?" one of the shapes inquired, and Harry recognized Hermione's voice in an instant. "Harry! You're here!"  
  
"Brilliant!" the other, tallish shape added, Ron's voice identifying who it was. "It saves the hassle of trying to write letters to you now we're back!"  
  
The smaller shape shook its feathers, Hedwig vigorously clearing off the soot from her body. She hooted frantically, apparently disagreeing with the idea of ever traveling by Floo. "I know how you feel," Harry smiled as he helped her up on his arm, brushing more of the soot from her face.  
  
"Harry! We've got to talk," Hermione noted in her usual business-like voice. "We've had a few, well, incidents back in France and, oh. Hello, Hagrid." She smiled and nodded at their friend. "Anyway, it's big. Really big."  
  
Harry remembered something he read earlier in the Daily Prophet. "It's not about giants, is it?"  
  
Both Ron and Hermione stared at him in shock. "Bloody hell," Ron whispered. "You've been learning that mind-reading stuff haven't you, Harry? He's gotten good at this."  
  
Harry smiled broadly. "I saw it in the papers."  
  
"Oh." Hermione looked disappointed. "So the Ministry knows. Well, we might still need to report what we saw, haven't we?"  
  
"Yeah, it could wait though." Ron shook at the soot covering every inch of his body. "It's lunchtime, innit it?"  
  
"Ron! Hermione, dear!" Mrs. Weasley came rushing in from the kitchen, followed by a girl with a brown bobbish hairstyle with matching eye color. She looked familiar, one of those Stilesmore girls from Hufflepuff. She'd apparently been helping the Weasley matriarch with a fresh-from-the-stove batch of chocolate cookies. "Hullo," muttered the girl, chomping on a warm cookie practically melting onto her fingers.  
  
Mrs. Weasley hugged both Ron and Hermione, not caring for the amount of soot that ended up on her apron and blouse. "Oh, Ron! You should have been back ages ago! I'd been worried sick!"  
  
"Mum!" Ron struggled a bit, which helped knock off the rest of the soot from his red hair. "I wasn't in trouble, if I were that clock would have said so!" He waved at the clock that now moved Ron's hand from 'Overseas' to 'Home'. Harry noticed that a hand for Hermione had been added and had moved as well, which brushed up against another clock hand that didn't reveal the person's entire face, just enough for Harry to spot his own messy hair.  
  
"Oh, posh! You're home at last!" She nearly burst into tears, but then Mrs. Weasley stood up and glared at her son. "Now go get cleaned up! I'll not have you sitting down for lunch with all that dirt and grime on you messing up my kitchen! Go!"  
  
"Alright," he groaned, then tapped Harry's arm. "You look a bit of mess yerself, Harry. Better get cleaned up too. Hermione, hope Ginny will let you borrow her bathroom, you think?"  
  
The Hufflepuff girl spoke up. "Ginny's bathroom? At the other end of her bedroom, right? Heh. Good luck getting to it."  
  
"Why?" Hermione paused, noticing the girl for the first time. "Dorothy, isn't it? One of Ginny's friends in Hufflepuff. Ginny's up to something, isn't she?"  
  
"Um, yeah," Harry answered, getting Hermione's attention. "Um, she's giving Luna a makeover."  
  
Dorothy's giggling in the background made Hermione purse her lips briefly as she nodded her head slowly, processing the information. "I see. Well, Ginny's been like that, actually. She would invite all the girls she knows from Hogwarts..."  
  
"From the sounds of it," Ron noted as a wave of laughter came down the stairwell, "she knows the whole lot of them! Mum! Just how many girls are up there?"  
  
But Mrs. Weasley had already hurried back into the kitchen as a whistle blew, apparently another item on the stove had finished cooking. Dorothy grinned wickedly and hurried up the stairs. Hagrid didn't look as though he'd have the answer Ron needed. So, both eyebrows arched in curiosity and awe, Ron turned to Hermione. "Just how many girls does it take to do a, what was it called, a makeover???"  
  
Hermione sighed, similar to whenever she had to explain something out of that Hogwarts, A History handbook. "As many as are interested in helping out, Ron. Honestly. Let's go upstairs."  
  
"I'll see if I can help yer mother in the kitchen, Ron," Hagrid volunteered as he turned in that direction. The teens quickly heard a "Oh no you don't!" as they rushed up the stairs.  
  
The noises from Ginny's room on the third floor were more noticeable as the trio got closer to the door. Hermione knocked a few times and shouted, "Ginny! Are you lot all decent in there? Can we enter?"  
  
"Door's open!" Hermione swung the door wide and Harry got his first long glimpse into Ginny's room. Back when she had that crush on him, she had been rather shy about letting him see the room, but Harry didn't see anything out of the ordinary. There were shades of pink all about, but also a lot of gold and scarlet of her House Gryffindor colors. A few fluffy stuffed animals rested on a bookshelf above an empty aquarium. A set of posters hung from each wall of her favorite Quidditch players and handsome wizard celebrities, with a sheepish looking Harry Potter portrait (it had to have been personally made, McGonagall having once assured Harry during his second year at Hogwarts that he didn't have merchandise like what Lockhart had) where his image had turned away so as not to look. Really, it appeared about what any girl's bedroom would look like.  
  
It was just the thirty-odd girls sitting in every other inch of the room that stunned the socks off him.  
  
Mandy Brocklehurst, from Ravenclaw, was pulling her shirt back down over her body, just caught in the act of describing the benefits of something called a 'push-up bra.' The girls sitting around her had gasped and giggled and waved their arms about trying to keep the boys from seeing. Dorothy Stilesmore had located a spot next to Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones, along with a handful of other Hufflepuff girls, who were working on something boiling in a good-sized cauldron next to Ginny's bathroom door.  
  
Hermione must have spotted them at about the same time as Harry did, for she called out, "Hannah, Susan! What are you making over there?"  
  
A Ravenclaw girl sitting on the bed in a cluster, the short skinny one with dry dark hair that Harry had seen earlier, answered rather curtly, "A mess is what they're making."  
  
"It's called rouge, Madeleine," Hannah replied. "Just because we Hufflepuffs are good at making cosmetics doesn't mean you have to get your knickers into a twist." The Hufflepuff girls all giggled upon hearing the word 'knickers' although Madeleine appeared nonplussed.  
  
"If it's one of Eloise Midgen's recipes, I wouldn't claim that," Madeleine retorted. A Hufflepuff girl with a discernable pimple over her left eyebrow angrily answered "Hey!" to that.  
  
Harry's gaze swept the room. The girls were mostly sitting by House, although the large grouping on Ginny's bed was an even mix of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Each girl had some odd coloring about their face, like makeup, reminding Harry of how they all looked at the Yule Ball. Ginny was standing up facing the bed, doing something Harry couldn't see. Luna wasn't anywhere in his line of sight.  
  
"Ginny!" Ron bellowed, trying to get his sister's attention. "What the bloody hell's going on in your room?"  
  
"Getting Luna ready for her date!" Ginny turned about, widely grinning. Her face had different shades of color along her cheeks and lips and eyebrows. Her movement allowed Harry to see just past her, and he spotted a very forlorn and obviously unhappy Luna Lovegood sinking against the edge of Ginny's bed.  
  
Luna's hair was being done up in three different styles by each different girl surrounding her. Makeup dotted her face and her lips were too bright a red for Harry's taste. The edges of her mouth suggested this was the twelfth lip gloss color being applied. There were apparently a lot of disagreements among the small army of girls over how Luna should be made up. They obviously couldn't agree on, or even notice, the level of anguish in Luna's eyes. "Hello, Harry Potter," came a great big sigh from the poor thing.  
  
Ron had broken out a goofy grin. "Oh, hey there, Luna."  
  
Big sigh. "Hello, Ronald."  
  
"Ready for your date, huh?" Ron was seemingly mocking the girl, at least to Harry's perception, and he found himself thinking Ron should shut up for once. "Who you going with then, Loony?"  
  
Every other girl in the room immediately pointed at Harry standing in the doorway before breaking out into a huge fit of giggles. Only Luna kept silent with her silver-gray eyes locked onto Harry's.  
  
Hermione quickly shut the door closed, which incited another fit of giggles now muffled by the oaken doorframe. Ron stared in shock at his best friend. "Bloody hell, Harry! You should have said something!"  
  
"I think he tried," Hermione noted. "That letter he sent about the Dementor attack, you mentioned meeting Luna at the mall."  
  
Harry nodded, for some reason not wanting to make eye contact with either of his friends. "Yeah, well, she mentioned not knowing what a movie was, so I...and she...well, we're going this Friday."  
  
Hermione arched an eyebrow. Then she nodded and smiled. "All right then. Good for you, Harry."  
  
"No, not good for me." Harry leaned in toward the pair, hissing his next sentence as quietly as he could. "What am I supposed to do?"  
  
Hermione was about to roll her eyes when Harry raised both hands. "No, stop that. I've been getting this whole 'Boys' response all week and nobody's telling me anything. I seriously need some help here!"  
  
"Hermione," Ron whispered, rather softly for some reason. "He needed your help before, with all that stuff that happened with Cho, remember?"  
  
She glanced between the two of them, noting the odd look of dread on Harry's face, and her own face sagged a little realizing Harry was truly clueless about what he was getting himself into. "All right. I won't criticize you, Harry, and you're right. You're probably overwhelmed by the whole thing now, I bet."  
  
Harry nodded quickly. "Tell me there's a book on it, or a manual. Or something."  
  
"There's been a lot, actually, there's always a 'Relationships' section in any of the bookstores. But honestly, Harry, you..." Hermione paused a moment, thought it over, then continued. "You should talk to one of the older Weasley boys. They'll have a better perspective on dating from a male perspective. I can only tell you what to expect from a girl's perspective."  
  
"Excellent, then. I need to know a girl's perspective, don't I?"  
  
Hermione squinted her eyes slightly. "Not really, Harry. That's why there's so many books out there. It's every other woman writing about their own experiences and opinions on relationships, and no two are ever the same. And none of them are ever really right. Honestly. I can give you all the advice I can, but experience is really the best way to go here."  
  
She spotted the anguish in her friend's confused eyes. "Right. And the only other things I can tell you is be confident, be honest, be sincere, be genuine, and be prepared."  
  
Harry sighed. "That's sort of like Hagrid only saying I should be a gentleman."  
  
"Well you know what? He's right. Exactly that." Other peal of laughter rattled Ginny's door. Hermione placed her head next to it with her ear pressed against the wood. "Oh dear Lord. They've done something to Luna's eyebrows."  
  
She grabbed the doorknob. "Look, honestly, right now Luna needs my help more than you need mine. Just go to the bathroom and get cleaned up. Give me a few minutes and I'll see what I can do to calm Ginny down. She's gone a tad...well, crazy with this makeover stuff."  
  
Ron's bathroom was on the fourth floor, next to the bedroom and just under the one spot that the attic ghoul liked to use for its Irish shoe dance lessons. It was similar to the bathrooms back in Gryffindor Tower, although with a small, two-meter wide bathtub that Harry first mistook four years ago as a misplaced hand basin.  
  
Harry washed off while Ron visited his room for a clean set of clothes. They didn't say much, there wasn't a lot of room for both to share the bathroom. Harry finished up, switched spots with Ron, and waited outside while Ron took more than his usual ten minutes to towel off. Harry reckoned there had to have been more than just the layer of soot on him: Ron and Hermione's arrival hinted at a swift departure from an undesirable situation with giants back in France.  
  
Ron emerged with a clean set of casual clothes, a jersey shirt of his beloved Chudley Cannons on display. Harry's nose picked up that Ron had somehow borrowed Dudley's deodorant. "All right, then. What happened? You're going out with Luna?"  
  
Harry started to feel stupid with this excuse he offered. "She's never seen a film before, so I'm taking her to one."  
  
"Huh. Overrated experience if you ask me," his friend snorted. "Saw that Wars thingee Hermione was so keen about, none of it made any sense. And that Force stuff? That's not magic."  
  
Harry kept silent but grinned as Ron checked off his complaints about the Star Wars trilogy as they walked back down to Ginny's room. "Too many light displays. Those sabers, they're a joke, they're nothing like wands. There was one character, you could tell it was a guy in a gorilla suit. That one metal box that rolled around, all it did was whirr and click, my dad's toolbox can do that. And I don't care what comparisons Hermione was talking about, with that one bad guy to our real life situation, but You-Know-Who does NOT go around in a black mask making sounds like he's choking...and there's no way he's your dad, right?"  
  
"Right. And my hand's not made out of wires and bits either."  
  
"Exactly!" They arrived at Ginny's door, and it sounded like things had not improved. The giggling had somehow gotten worse, but each fit of giggles were interrupted by rather harsh language. Arguments were breaking out apparently.  
  
Ron pressed an ear against the door and grimaced. "You think Hermione's in trouble?"  
  
"Harry! Ron!" Both of them turned to face down the narrow hallway toward the stairs. Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil, and a younger Gryffindor girl Harry vaguely knew as Kari Tsukino were standing there. He also vaguely remembered once scaring poor Kari back in her first year, when she was terrified that he was going to summon up an army of snakes while he was the suspected Heir of Slytherin. Ginny, as her friend back then, couldn't help calm her down, mostly because Ginny was having a few problems of her own at the time. Once that whole nightmarish year was fixed, though, Kari turned out okay.  
  
"Parvati, hi." Harry nodded as his fellow Gryffindor students. "Um, I guess Ginny invited you here."  
  
"Actually, no." The three girls moved up to Ginny's door. Parvati slightly smiled at Harry, which made him feel slightly queasy: he wasn't too sure how things were between them since he had asked her out to that Yule Ball. Since the two of them had been on speaking terms the past year, Parvati apparently didn't hold a grudge that it wasn't that much fun for her. She still cast a quick scowl at Ron, though: her twin Padma had clearly not enjoyed her Yule Ball with Weasley, and as sisters Parvati shared her distaste. "We've just gotten an O-mail from Hermione to meet here. Well, I did. Lavender was invited too, Hermione figured we'd be hanging out. Kari's along for the ride, hope she's allowed to visit."  
  
"I ought to be," Kari sighed, somewhat nervous. "I mean, Ginny and I were friends, hope we still are and all..."  
  
Another round of girlish giggles issued from the closed door. Lavender leaned in, pressing an ear to the wood and grinning wickedly. "Ooo, I know that sound! Ginny must be throwing a makeover party!"  
  
Kari grinned as wide as her two friends. "Ohmygod, that sounds like so much fun! Ginny hasn't done one in ages!"  
  
Parvati reached over to turn the doorknob, but Harry reached across to block her. "Wait a minute. Hermione invited you???"  
  
The three girls glanced between each other before Parvati nodded.  
  
"But that was just...that's almost ten minutes ago she'd gone in there. I thought she was going to..." Harry's eyes widened in shock. "Ron?"  
  
"Yeah, Harry?"  
  
"Hermione's in trouble."  
  
Harry grabbed the doorknob himself and shoved the door open. His worst fears were confirmed: Hermione was now sitting on the bed near a rather short Gryffindor girl, talking animatedly at Ginny about something. The groupings of girls had shifted somewhat, and there were now a pair of Ravenclaws sitting with Hannah and Susan learning their cosmetics secrets while that Ravenclaw Rhiannon was working on a Gryffindor girl's plait.  
  
There were no signs that the makeover party was ending; indeed, it seemed as though more girls had arrived and the bedroom was now packed. There were at least four more girls on the bed than counted earlier. One far corner of the room had been blocked off by towels left up with hover charms, but you could tell there were at least twelve, maybe twenty, giggling girls doing something back there. Harry wondered just how big Ginny's room could be, shouldn't there be some sort of SRO limit to a room, for fire safety requirements or something?...  
  
And there was no sign of Luna.  
  
"Hermione!" Harry shouted so loud that every girl in the room went quiet. "Hermione! I thought you had gone in here to help Luna!"  
  
His friend sat stunned for a moment, then scowled back at him. "Well, Harry, I had. And I am, I'm still trying to talk to Ginny about all of this." Hermione waved a hand at Ron's sister, who looked peeved at Harry. "But there's only so much I can do. Do you know how hard it is to stop a party when it gets started?"  
  
"But you invited more girls here!" Harry waved in kind at Parvati, Lavender and Kari, who has slipped past him and were slowly working their way over to the Hufflepuff cosmetics corner.  
  
"Well, I had to, I need their moral support. Glad you could make it." Hermione flashed a quick wave hello to her fellow Gryffindor bunkmates.  
  
Harry still felt a surge of anger through his body. "But where's Luna? She was miserable! You were supposed to get her out of this!"  
  
"What? This was for Loony?" Kari squinched her nose in disgust. "She's a freak! Why'd she need a makeover?"  
  
"Because I'm going on a date with her, dammit!" Harry shouted, not minding at all any more, his anger kicking in. Half of the girls giggled but the other half gasped in shock. It was rare to hear a boy openly admit he was going on a date.  
  
"Harry!" Hermione got his attention. "Will. You. Not. Yell. Please. You're making this worse."  
  
Harry took a deep breath, tried his best to settle his nerves. "Herm, I'm sorry, but I need to say this. You are ALL blowing this way out of proportion! IT'S JUST A DATE. And I'm a little upset about this because it feels like you're all piling onto my personal life here! And Luna's! And you all keep showing up with more of your friends and it's all getting out of control!"  
  
Harry sensed someone just behind him, and he turned to face a dark brown haired girl wearing green and silver robes, dusted with a bit of soot over herself and the five boxes of Mad Dog pizzas hovering just behind her. "Excuse me, Pothead, mind moving so I can scoot in with the food?"  
  
Harry scowled in disbelief at her, then turned back to face the entire room. "Who the hell invited a Slytherin girl???"  
  
"Hey!" A pair of Ravenclaw girls from behind the hovering towels stuck their faces out. "Don't you dare insult Alyssa while we're here!"  
  
Ginny glared at Harry as well, not as much because he was debasing an S girl but for his open disdain at HER party. "I invited her, Harry, she promised to bring the pizzas."  
  
"Yeah, I did." Alyssa Myers, same age group as Ginny and Luna, used her elbow to push Harry, getting him to move over. "And no boys allowed, so no slices for you! Out of the way." She sniffed the air as she passed by Harry and Ron. "Someone smells like my uncle. Ick!"  
  
The five pizza boxes flew to various girls within the room, especially at the short Gryffindor girl sitting next to Hermione. Harry finally recognized her through all that makeup, Christina, that friend of Ginny's who always insisted on being called Chris so much that her last name was forgotten. Chris opened her pizza box, then grimaced like she usually did. "Great. I'm pretty sure I didn't order the broccoli and pineapple. Where's the onion and anchovies, dammit!"  
  
Harry was about to do some more shouting when Ginny's bathroom door opened. Luna stepped out, looking better than she did minutes earlier. All of the makeup had been washed away, and two of the three hair weaves that were being done to her had been undone. She glanced at Harry and smiled, relieved more than happy, and Harry found himself shutting up. He looked away, staring at Hermione who was about to chew into a broccoli and pineapple pizza slice, but had paused to give Harry a quick shrug. With the rage deflating, Harry silently slammed Ginny's bedroom door shut.  
  
He was left standing in the hallway with a sheepish-looking Ron, who seemed embarrassed by what his friend was going through. "Well," he finally noted, "just be grateful Herm didn't invite those two bunkmates of hers she DOESN'T get along with..."  
  
The door swung open, Ginny stormed into the hallway, and slammed her own door shut. She stood right up at Harry, even though still a head shorter than him she looked angry enough to grow in height that very moment just to glare right into his eyes. "How dare you!"  
  
"How dare me?" Harry glared back. He wasn't going to back down or apologize for something not his bloody fault. "What about you? You're interfering with my life, Ginny!"  
  
"Guys, stop, wait," Ron urged, trying to pull his sister back. Ginny refused to move. Nothing short of magic, and maybe not even that, would move her.  
  
Ginny growled through gritted teeth. "Luna's my friend. I'm doing my best for her. I'm doing what's right for her, and how dare you start ruining your own date! I knew you'd try to do something to worm your way out of it, and telling her to get rid of the charm stuff I worked so hard on over the weekend, you're sabotaging her aren't you?"  
  
"I am not ruining my own date! I never asked Luna to do anything to herself. I liked her the way she is dammit!" Harry's rage was returning. "Did you even ask me if I wanted to see her change? Did you even ask her? Because it doesn't look like it to me! I'm going on the date, Ginny! And don't blame me for getting angry because YOU'RE the one who never asked me in the first place!"  
  
"Virginia! Harry!" Mrs. Weasley's voice echoed up the stairs from the kitchen, but before anything else happened the bedroom door opened again.  
  
Luna stepped into the opening, keeping herself in the middle of the doorway. "Ginny, can I ask you something?"  
  
"WHAT?"  
  
"Did you ever ask me? Honestly? Did you ever ask me if I wanted to improve my looks?"  
  
Ginny paused, not liking what was happening at the moment. "What? But I did. I did ask, but Luna you never cared enough about your looks..."  
  
"You're wrong." Luna sighed, but smiled. "I do care about how I look, and this IS how I look because this is how I am. And he cares about how I look. He likes me the way I am. Do you, Harry Potter?"  
  
She wasn't looking right at him, but at a spot just past his shoulder. But still, Harry blushed, then took a breath and relaxed. "You look fine the way you are, Luna. I like the way you look."  
  
Luna's smile didn't change much, but there was something there again in her smile that Harry liked to see. Luna looked at Ginny. "Ginny, I apologize for any inconvenience I've caused. We're still friends, aren't we?"  
  
"Well, what, I mean..." Ginny flustered about, getting caught off guard. "Of course we're friends, that's why I tried to...oh, nuts!" She glanced down, frowning at herself. "I'm sorry I screwed up, Luna."  
  
"Friends to the end, then." Luna offered a hand to Ginny. "Better hurry in. They're down to the last slice of anchovies. I asked they save it for you."  
  
Ginny took her friend's hand and moved toward her bedroom, but paused and glanced back at Harry. Both of them had to deal now with this. "Uh, well, Harry..."  
  
"Yeah, uh, Ginny. Yeah. What I said..."  
  
"We'll talk later." Ginny didn't smile when she said that, but the tone was not harsh. She went in with Luna, who then closed the door again.  
  
Both Harry and Ron loudly exhaled. "Bloody hell," Ron gasped. "I've rarely seen her that mad, Harry, it's a bit too much like mum's. Still," he sounded a bit down. "Pity we're missing out on the pizza."  
  
The door swung open again, and Hermione stood in the doorway with a slice of pepperoni pizza in her hand. "Here, Ron. We hadn't eaten all morning, had we? Figured you'd like a slice."  
  
"Don't give it to him!" a rather needling voice shouted out behind her.  
  
"Clamp up, Alyssa!" Hermione smiled broadly at Ron. "Hurry, before I start a riot over feeding boys."  
  
"Thanks a load, Hermione," Ron grinned, taking the slice from her. He took a quick bite and mumbled, "You're a lifesaver, you are."  
  
"Oh, stop," she blushed, then glanced at Harry. "And you."  
  
Harry frowned. "Hermione. I yelled at you. I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't apologize, you're still not very good at it."  
  
Harry was stunned. "Yes I am good at it! I'm being sincere here! I was mad and...and I shouldn't have been."  
  
He was more stunned when Hermione's grin got wider. "You're right, you are good at it. And I understand, it's a bit stressful dealing with all of this, so you didn't need to apologize to me anyway."  
  
"But maybe with Ginny..."  
  
"Do that later. And besides, one other thing," Hermione noted with her official voice. "Harry, you'll do fine. You don't have to talk to anybody else, you are as ready as you'll ever be. Got it?"  
  
Harry scowled, letting the words bounce a bit in his head. "No."  
  
Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. "Boys."  
  
Ron was halfway finished eating his pizza slice. "Herm! You promiffed not to thay that!"  
  
Hermione gave him a good long stare. "Eat your food, Ron. Now, I have to go back in and do a head count. I'm pretty sure we've gotten forty-two girls into Ginny's room now, and for some reason I find that very fascinating. Really. See you in a bit." She hurried back in and slammed the door shut.  
  
Ron had finished his pizza slice and gave the door a good scowling. "You know, they keep saying 'Boys' like it's our fault they're all crazy. Girls, I say."  
  
"Ron," Harry started, then paused. "Ron? Did you ever get the Lecture?"  
  
"Lecture? What lecture?"  
  
"The one Dean warned us about. The one your parents give you."  
  
"That?" Ron shrugged. "That dating lecture? About sex? Of course not. I don't think I'll ever get it, they probably don't even know it. I mean, look at the number of kids they've had. If they ever got the Lecture themselves it never took, you think?"  
  
"Hmm," Harry thought. For some reason it seemed Ron was missing out, which seemed like a mixed blessing somehow. "Could be right about that. But Ron..."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You'll learn." Harry smiled.  
  
The door opened again. This time it was Chris sticking her head through the doorway. "Harry?"  
  
"Yeah, Chris, what it is?"  
  
"Just a word of advice."  
  
Harry's stomach sank a bit. He was going to get advice from a girl who barely knew him. "Which is?"  
  
"Don't yell." Chris seemed very serious about this. "Don't yell at Ginny. In fact don't yell at anybody. That's MY job."  
  
"Oh." Harry took a moment. "Okay."  
  
"Bloody competition," Chris mumbled to herself before closing the door.  
  
Ron grabbed at Harry's shoulder. "Let's move. If we stand here any longer we'll get chewed out by all 42 girls, Harry."  
  
"Good point." So they went down to the kitchen, where they got chewed out by Mrs. Weasley for yelling so loud that the garden gnomes were back up and about ruining the vegetables. Harry sighed, and wondered for a moment, just a moment, if it wouldn't be more pleasant to go back to Snape for Occlumens training...  
  
Chapter Nine: Open Until Midnight  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, I warned you. I warned you. But no, you said it's just a little rabbit wasn't it? Oh, wait, channeling Monty Python again. Damn. There goes my New Years Resolution. Anyway...  
  
With thanks galore to each of the authors over on Fiction Alley who graciously allowed me to borrow their Original Characters and use them in various criminal schemes. I mean, I don't think Alyssa paid for those pizzas, do you?  
  
Dorothy Stilesmore, Hufflepuff, appears courtesy of Polaris.  
  
Madeleine Vance, Ravenclaw, appears courtesy of Kjrsten.  
  
Alyssa Myers, Slytherin, appears courtesy of KittenOfDoom, who is now suing me for those slanderous remarks I made about Alyssa's not paying for the pizzas (KOD: "But here's the bloody receipt! You bastid! (pulls wand out) Eat slugs, Wittylibrarian!"). Ouch! Okay! Okay! She paid for the pizzas!...  
  
Christina (last name unknown), Gryffindor, appears courtesy of Wildmage.  
  
Kari Tsukino, Gryffindor, appears courtesy of Miss Kitty.  
  
Most other girls named in the story are canonical, that is, JK Rowling thought them up. There's one, Rhiannon, whom I added myself. That was about it for the OC's.  
  
Again, many thanks to all, and to all a good night. (MOD zaps me anyway) Ouch! Cough. Cough. Oh, no... 


	9. Chapter Nine: The Ongoing Struggle Again...

Author's Notes: I had problems loading up Chapter Eight as it had gotten too long, and so I'm very skittish right now of overly long chapters. I was hoping to get to the actual movie experience with this entry, but now it'll be in Chapter Ten. That said, here's...  
  
Chapter Nine: The Ongoing Struggle Against Angst and Unwanted Food Stains  
  
Another night, another dream. Ginny was lining up a priest that could speak in Parseltongue since the last three couldn't, once again delaying the wedding. Luna had been tackled while exiting the carriage by Ms. Neaux who had brought an entire army of manicurists to give her one more makeover. And Harry found himself yelling at the church windows because if there's one thing stain glass window saints shouldn't do, it's giggle.  
  
"Thursdays," Harry groaned as he woke up that morning. Thursdays were a mixed blessing right now, good as it's one more day close to a Friday but bad because it's one more day close to a Friday.  
  
Harry awoke to a rather hostile snowy white owl. Hedwig was quietly but viciously attacking something near the open window under the ledge. He worked his way over, spotting a dropped letter tossed upon the floor, before recognizing what it was Hedwig was attacking.  
  
She was taking apart an O-mail owl bit by bit, holding it down with both claws whilst pecking with her beak. She paused long enough to turn her head back to face Harry, giving him a rather brutal and self-satisfying chirping before returning her attention to the nearly devastated device.  
  
"Don't like the competition, do you?" Harry asked, somewhat knowing the answer.  
  
Hedwig gave a long, unhappy hoot. If owls could snarl she would have done that instead.  
  
Harry picked up the letter. The seal was familiar: Lupin's. He pulled open the parchment and read:  
  
We have received word from Granger about what she had learned in France. Dumbledore had been waiting for such confirmation, and has alerted the Ministry that the rumors were true. However, precautions have been established and a plan is underway to counter the Death Eaters' coming attack.  
  
I have received word that you may be going out into the public area tomorrow. Please be alert at all times. Events are very dangerous right now, Harry, and I know I shouldn't even be suggesting this, but please keep us advised on your status. I'm worried that You-Know-Who's sealing you off from his head means he's going to attack you directly. I wish I could tell you and your friend to enjoy yourselves, but it is literally a war out there now.  
  
One other thing: if you've got any questions, any at all, well, about girls. I've been asked to provide information if needed. As I'm not really family I don't know if I have the right to, but I'm available to answer any questions. Don't be afraid, that's the best I can offer for now.  
  
Please take care. Remus.  
  
Harry nodded and folded up the parchment. So it seems most everyone who knows him now knew about the date with Luna. It didn't bother him so much now, although his dread about the Daily Prophet or the Quibbler getting wind of it still slunk about his thoughts.  
  
The Burrow, upon his return, had become the very center of the universe. It was certainly a center of traffic and activity. With Ron and Hermione returned, the nearly empty house now seemed alive again. O-mails flew in and out of windows on nearly every floor, mostly through Ginny's, who was keeping in touch with most of the girls from the previous day. Hedwig tried attacking any that got too close to her, but Harry calmed her down and escorted her up to Ron's room, where the O-mails weren't going.  
  
Hermione had traveled from her real home (her parents stayed back in France to finish their vacation, she said) and back, with a week's worth of clothes and supplies. There was no sign of Crookshanks, since Hermione decided the O-mail traffic would upset the cat as much as Hedwig. Luna did not show all day, but Harry didn't blame her: after yesterday, even he felt the need for some serious downtime.  
  
He didn't get it, though. The Anglia was still a few charms and wires away from charging up and acting like a real car. And even though Hagrid's root compound did the trick getting rid of the rust, there were still unsightly gaps of scratched paint to re-coat.  
  
Hermione helped there, getting one can of turquoise paint that Bill had purchased and whipping out her wand. "Decorari nebulosi," she intoned, waving between the can and one of the larger gaps on the driver side door. Immediately, a spray of paint shot out from the can and misted over the metal chassis, coating smooth and even onto the surface, meshing into the original coat.  
  
"Alright then," Ron nodded, grabbing a can for himself and getting to the engine hood. With a wave of his wand, he uttered "Decorari nebulosi" and mimicked Hermione's gesture toward the Anglia. Whereupon the misty paint flew out of the can and all over Ron's upper body.  
  
"Ah, Ron, yer gotta aim a little better than that," Hagrid noted, pulling a cloth stuck in his belt to try and wipe the turquoise from Ron's eyes.  
  
After a few minutes of groaning and griping by all involved, Hermione seized Ron by the hand and dragged him toward the Burrow. "Let's get you cleaned up, Ron."  
  
"Hermione, no, I want to work on the car! I can get this!"  
  
"Four's far too many people working on this, Ron. Please," Hermione argued. "Besides, I've scheduled an afternoon conference with Ministry Aurors through your dad, and you ought to be there with me, so you need to keep clean for that..."  
  
Bill watched her drag his little brother back to the house with a sideways grin, and he laughed when Harry gave him a questioning look. "C'mon, Harry, let's see if you're any better with a wand or a paintbrush."  
  
"I'd prefer the wand," Harry grinned, and gathered up Ron's abandoned paint can. With a "Decorari nebulosi" and a good flick of the wrist, he got the paint going in the right direction, covering up a hundred good-sized spider scratch marks.  
  
With the spraying job finished, Bill got a Caldor spell working to heat-dry the paint. "Maybe needs one more coat, over the whole car to make sure it evens out," he noted. It got to be lunchtime when they finished heating the second coat.  
  
Hermione had Ron all spiffed up, and they were glancing through the pages of the Daily Prophet as they were finishing up their sandwiches. Mrs. Weasley had the places all set, except for Hagrid who simply couldn't fit anywhere, but he accepted the situation and gladly took his lunch (he had brought a large bucket of something for Mrs. Weasley to heat up) back out to the Anglia to keep it company.  
  
"Harry, I do hope you find some time to get some more Occlumens training," Hermione said, giving him a stern look. "I know it's been a hectic week for you, but you shouldn't neglect something so important."  
  
Ron dropped the sports section of the Daily Prophet and leaned back a bit in his chair so that Hermione couldn't see the funny looks he was giving her. Harry grinned, which unfortunately tipped Hermione off and she quickly spun about, catching Ron in mid-grimace. "Ron! I thought we agreed!"  
  
"No, you agreed," Ron answered, leaning forward in his chair. "Why is it whenever we have a conversation, it's always your agreeing to something you've already figured out and me never getting in a word edgewise?"  
  
"But Harry needs to work on this, it's important..."  
  
"And why are you deciding what's best for Harry all the time too?" Ron leaned over to grab a bite of his half-finished sandwich. "You're as bad as Ginny is when it comes to Harry, you know..."  
  
As he said that, an O-mail owl flew down the stairwell, curved the corner, sped into the kitchen, thwacked him across the backside of his head, circled back around and hurried back up the stairs.  
  
Ron's face was splattered with the mustard from the sandwich he was trying to eat. "MUM!"  
  
"Get a napkin, dear," Mrs. Weasley answered, picking up Hermione's finished plate. "And she's right, Harry, we ought to get one more lesson in this afternoon. How's the car?"  
  
Bill answered. "All it needs are a check of the alignment, the headlights, and the radio."  
  
"Well, I guess I should ask, what's the schedule going to be like for tomorrow?" Harry asked.  
  
"We need to be at the theater by six, and that's the one in Guildford, right?" Bill nodded his head slowly, thinking this out. "It'll be easier if Fleur and I got Luna here, then we fly over..."  
  
"Bill!" Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "I'd rather you not fly in that thing! Causes enough trouble as is!"  
  
"Fine. We'll drive. Need to leave earlier from here then." Bill continued. "We go by, where is this, Little Whinging? You'll need to leave a map for me, Harry, then from there we ought to get to Guildford and make it in time for the film."  
  
"And what are you going to do after the film?" Mrs. Weasley asked. This caught Harry's attention. He hadn't thought about what would happen AFTER. Just then he got a kick sideways kick from Bill who shot him a quick glance, hinting he should answer for them.  
  
"Fleur wanted to see the sights. She hasn't been to enough of England to get a feel for the countryside," Bill offered. "There's a riverwalk there, I should think. It's an open public area, mum, Harry and Luna should be okay."  
  
Mrs. Weasley sat quietly for a few moments, glancing sternly between the two as though passing judgment on that plan. Finally, she sighed. "Ron, hurry up with your lunch, you and Hermione need to get going. And Harry, once your done go freshen up and we'll get in some more Occlumens training, all right?"  
  
Harry pointed in the direction of the outdoor shed. "If I can, I need to speak with Hagrid about something, haven't had a chance to ask him a question that needed answering, if it's all right..."  
  
Thursday night gave way to Friday, and Harry awoke from a dreamless night, which actually worried him. He'd have thought with such a stressful day ahead of him, his mind would be overloaded with nightmarish scenarios and whatnot.  
  
He didn't leave 4 Privet Drive that day, on orders from Mrs. Weasley who decided not to have him come to the Burrow. "Too much distractions right now," she noted as she escorted him back to Figg's house. Mrs. Figg's house would be unavailable since she would be entertaining her neighbors, celebrating a grandniece's birthday apparently, so Harry was stuck with summer schoolwork and a very disgruntled Aunt Petunia.  
  
To Harry's relief, her threats from last week to have him repaint the entire house exterior had come to nothing: the Dursleys' color scheme for olive gray wall with orange trim didn't go over too well with the neighborhood's planning board for the seventh straight year. Rumor had it a restraining order preventing anyone with a paintbrush near 4 Privet Drive was in the works.  
  
Without that many chores about the house to do, Harry was left to clean Hedwig's cage and do some summer schoolwork and take a shower and get cleaned up and get ready for the date and change shirts because the first shirt was a terrible color and the second shirt had a small tear near the pocket and the third shirt smelled funny and the fourth shirt was too short in the sleeves and...  
  
"Wotcher, Harry!" Tonks announced herself at Harry's open window while he was in the middle of changing out of the fourth shirt. Harry's first thought was that she ought to have knocked first, his next thought was to cover up his chest with the shirt, the following thought was concern that someone would be seeing her levitating at his window...  
  
Harry slipped the fourth shirt back on, and hurried over to the window. "Tonks, get inside before someone sees you!"  
  
He grabbed her and tossed her over to the bed, where she flopped down with a "Whee" and a big goofy grin. Her hair had gone pink and one side of it was longer than the other, giving her head a angled appearance. "Alright, Harry, why the pile of shirts on the floor?"  
  
Harry sighed. "I've got a date tonight. I need to find a good shirt to wear..."  
  
"Why not this one?" Tonks lifted up the second shirt, a casual green polo shirt with the pocket tear. With a swift "Reparo" from Tonks, the tear repaired itself.  
  
"Oh. I didn't think of that." Harry started to slip off his shirt, then glared at Tonks. "Don't look."  
  
Tonks giggled. "You're a boy. You're not supposed to be shy about showing off your chest."  
  
"Can you...just turn around for a moment?"  
  
She smirked, then closed her eyes and turned her head, holding out the green shirt. Harry quickly slipped off the one on him, grabbed the green shirt and slid it over his torso.  
  
"By the way, you need a tan."  
  
"Shut up, Tonks."  
  
"Just checking in." Tonks opened her eyes, now the same green color as Harry's. "With Arabella busy with her party, they need an extra check-up on you to make sure all's well. Especially now."  
  
Harry paused. "Why now? What's going on?"  
  
Tonks frowned, realizing she stated more than she should. "Two things, Harry. One is there's going to be a giant attack on Hogwarts."  
  
"What?!" Harry checked his voice, he found himself yelling too loud again. "Really? The school's going to be hit? What do you want me to do, Tonks, if Dumbledore needs me there..."  
  
"You're not needed, Harry. Dumbledore's already got a plan in place." Tonks blinked her eyes, the color changing to an ocean blue. "And then there's that second thing."  
  
"Which is?"  
  
She grinned wickedly. "You're going on a date."  
  
"Oh. That." Harry sat down on the edge of the bed next to Tonks. "Yeah, I've got that tonight with Luna."  
  
He noticed that Tonks was still staring at him, her eyes had changed back to green. "Was there something else going on?"  
  
"No. Just those two things tonight, which ought to tell you something."  
  
Harry gave it some thought. "The two events are connected???"  
  
"That's what Dumbledore thinks." Tonks sighed. "Shouldn't have told you, mate."  
  
"Well, why not?"  
  
"Because Dumbledore didn't want you distracted, that's why. Yeah, he knows about the date, and he wants you to enjoy it, Harry, it's a good thing for you, get out, enjoy your youth, all that."  
  
Harry sighed and looked away. "How am I going to enjoy it now, if I'm going to be attacked tonight?"  
  
"Hold it." Tonks patted his shoulder twice. "I never said you were going to be attacked, just the school. But Dumbledore thinks one's connected to the other. If we stop the attack on Hogwarts, then nothing should happen to you."  
  
"What happens if the attack succeeds?"  
  
"It won't, Harry. Have faith in us, some of us know what we're doing." Tonks promptly slid off the bed. "Oof. Anyway. You've got protection."  
  
"The Latitalisman," Harry whispered, checking the device once again on his belt. "But what about Luna?"  
  
"She's got protection too. Oh, speaking of protection, Fred (or George) wanted to make sure you got this." Tonks pulled something out of her robe and tossed it to Harry. Harry looked at the small, palm-sized packet and noticed it was a condom.  
  
"Ahh! Tonks!" He tossed it back to her. "I don't need that!"  
  
"No! Here! Just in case!" She handed it back.  
  
"No! No in case! It's just a date to the movie! I'm not going to use it!" He tossed it like a hot potato.  
  
She reached over and shoved it into his shirt pocket. "You sure? Who knows, you might need it to make a water balloon..."  
  
"Tonks!" he pulled it out and tossed it back again. "Don't do this!"  
  
"WHAT IS GOING ON?!" The door swung wide open and Aunt Petunia stood there in a rage that could shake the foundations of the house.  
  
Harry stood up and moved from the bed as fast as he could. Getting caught in his bedroom with a young woman was bad enough, but with a condom in plain sight. Oh GOD no, he moaned inwardly.  
  
Aunt Petunia glared at him, then glared in turn at Tonks who had remained calmly on the bed. Only it wasn't Tonks now, the hair had gone dirt brown and scraggily, her eyes gray and wide, and her chin slightly pointed. "Hello, Mrs. Dursley," said Tonks wearing her Luna face.  
  
OH NO, Harry's inward voice screamed. This could be a bit worse.  
  
Aunt Petunia clenched the frying pan Harry had suddenly noticed in her hand. "Who...are...you...little girl?"  
  
"I am Luna. It is very nice to meet you." Tonks had, rather shockingly, gotten Luna's voice and behavior down pat.  
  
"The girl?! This is the girl you're ruining your life with?!" Aunt Petunia screeched at Harry. "You snuck her up to your room?! To your BED!!!"  
  
There was nothing Harry could say at the moment. Aunt Petunia raised the pan and waggled it at her nephew. "Is this...is this part of your date, start corrupting young girls under MY VERY ROOF???"  
  
"No, it isn't." Tonks/Luna answered. "Harry has been the perfect gentleman."  
  
"And you!" The pan was waved in front of the Metamorphmagus. "You get out of my house right now! The date is OFF, you...you wh...you vile little child!"  
  
"Oh." Tonks/Luna stood to go. "I'll just go tell Uncle Remus Lupin then. Goodbye, Harry Potter."  
  
Aunt Petunia dropped the frying pan. Harry realized that Uncle Vernon must have told her about the werewolf. "What? What??? Wait!" She gasped for breath, taking her time. "Wait. Fine. You can still go to the cinema then. But she does NOT come into this house EVER AGAIN. Is that understood?"  
  
Harry nodded in total silence.  
  
"And you." She pointed a thin finger at Tonks/Luna. "I want you out of the house now."  
  
"Very well." Tonks/Luna winked at Harry and wordlessly mouthed 'Wotcher' at him.  
  
"Uh, Aunt Petunia, I'll...I'll escort her down," Harry stammered, moving quickly past her and dragging Tonks/Luna out by the arm. He hurried down the stairs with her and just as swiftly onto the front yard. If Harry had noticed, he would have realized he past right through the front door like it wasn't even there.  
  
"Harry!" Tonks/Luna gasped in surprise. "Did you know what you just did?"  
  
"I don't care!" Harry spun her about, checking the front of the house to make sure no one was spying. "Tonks," he hissed. "Do you still have...you know...the wrapper?"  
  
"Relax, Harry." Tonks/Luna tapped her robe pocket. "She didn't see it."  
  
"Well, just keep it on you, I won't be needing it." Harry sighed, rubbing his hair. "Tonks, can you do two things for me?"  
  
"Call it, Harry."  
  
"Can you get in touch with Luna and warn her that...that she's not going to get a warm reception when she shows up here today?"  
  
"I'll give her the heads up, Harry. What else?"  
  
Harry sighed again. "This was something I wanted to ask you last week, before you Disapparated. I wanted to ask you about goblins and shopping malls, because..."  
  
The day wore on and the afternoon got late by the time a rather tame looking Ford Anglia rolled slowly to the front of 4 Privet Drive. Harry had expected them to arrive at least an hour earlier, and wasn't too sure if they would be able to make the distance to Guildford now.  
  
Uncle Vernon had arrived home from work almost a few minutes earlier, and he hurried out to the front of the house once he saw that car. "You! You bloody maniac!"  
  
Bill, hair done up in ponytail with the earring still in place, but in ordinary Muggle jeans and shirt and sneakers, stepped out from the driver's seat, confused. "I'm sorry, what?"  
  
Vernon squinted. "Is that your car?"  
  
"It's my father's, actually..."  
  
Harry stepped slowly out of the front doorway, dreading this. His uncle raised a finger and prodded Bill in the chest every three seconds while he spoke. "This car, this bloody car was seen by me ruining the window bars of my house, not more than four years ago, my young man. You and your bloody family are responsible for wrecking my home!"  
  
Bill seemed to take the prodding with remarkable calm. "I may have heard about that, yeah. I think you're right. How much were the damages?"  
  
Uncle Vernon was prepared for a set of denials or threats in return. "I beg your pardon, what?"  
  
"How much did it cost you, sir? My family is willing to repay the damages we're responsible for." Bill offered his hand as a gesture of good will. "I can assure you we are able to pay in your funds."  
  
Harry was horrified. He knew the Weasleys were always struggling to balance their finances and he didn't want them to do this. Who knew what kind of bill run-ups the Dursleys would think of...  
  
Uncle Vernon glanced down at the offered hand and didn't take it. With a huff, he growled, "Your kind has solicitors, do they not?"  
  
"Yes, but they normally don't operate in your legal system, I'm afraid." Bill pulled his hand back and pulled out a business card from his pocket. "My bank's contact information in your world. Reach the person on the card, give them my name, Weasley, and that I work for Gringotts. We can settle through them. This Monday, perhaps?"  
  
Uncle Vernon took the card, grumbled something, glowered at everyone, and finally snarled at Harry. "So I expect you're asking me to give you an allowance now, boy? So you can waste it on soda and popcorn?"  
  
Harry started to answer, but Bill interrupted. "The date's been taken care of, sir. It's a...birthday present from my parents. There were concerns and..."  
  
"Never mind!" Uncle Vernon snarled. "Now let's see that girl of yours, boy!"  
  
On cue, the back passenger door opened and Luna emerged. Her dirty blonde hair had remained straggly and waist-long, and her face only showed the slightest hint of make-up and no lip gloss. She wore a simple summer blue dress with a knee-length skirt and blue slide sandals. The only significant difference was that her butterbeer cap necklace had been replaced by a necklace of glittering white seashells.  
  
"So this is her, isn't it?" Uncle Vernon sneered, searching for something to disapprove. "Huh. Not much to look at, but then again neither are you, boy."  
  
Luna did a good job not noticing the insult. "Hello, sir. I do want to apologize for earlier today." Harry did breath a bit when he heard her say that: it meant Tonks had gotten to her in time.  
  
Aunt Petunia stood out on the porch step and fumed ever so noticeably. Uncle Vernon glared at the three moviegoers. "Fine then. Fine. I want him back at a reasonable time, do you hear? 3 in the bloody morning does NOT count as a reasonable time!"  
  
"Understood." Bill nodded ever so slightly, then turned to the young couple. "Harry, Luna, let's ride. Get her door, man."  
  
Harry shook, puzzled for a moment, then rushed to the passenger door where Luna had emerged. Luna walked slowly to the car, and as she got close to Harry she whispered, "Wotcher, Harry."  
  
He stopped breathing. Choked a bit, regained his senses. "Tonks?" he hissed.  
  
"No. It's Luna," she smiled, and Harry had indeed seen that smile before. "Nymphadora had asked me to say that to you, see how you would react. She did a very nice job with my face, but her eyes needed work, I'd thought." She got in and started to close the door.  
  
"Whoa, what?" Harry said, keeping the door open, thinking he could get in the back seat with her. Bill quickly tapped Harry on the shoulder. "No, Harry. Front seat, with me. Girls in the back. Get around to the other side."  
  
Harry sighed and closed the car door for Luna. He hurried around the back of the car, admiring the repair job they had done on it, and noticing a rather odd bumper sticker that read "If They Attack the Car, Save the Radio!"  
  
Harry got in, with Bill getting behind the steering wheel of the Anglia. "Buckle up, everyone!" Bill noted.  
  
Harry glanced to the back seat as he reached about for the safety belt. Fleur and Luna seemed to be getting along, with Fleur in a rather elaborate multi-layered silk outfit. Everyone seemed ready to go. Bill revved up the car's engine, put it into Drive, and sped down Privet Drive, working the neighborhood roads back out to the main highway.  
  
"Okay," Bill said as they made the turn onto the highway. "Which way to Guildford?"  
  
"Well," Harry glanced over the dashboard at the traffic ahead of them, "we ought to get to the M25, heading south to the A3 and take that southwest to Guildford."  
  
"Oh." Bill reached over and tugged on the Invisibility switch on the dashboard as the car and passengers vanished from view. "I was thinking it'd be easier to fly there."  
  
"Bill!" Harry glanced about. "Wait! People would have seen us disappear!"  
  
"Yeah, but they won't report it, will they?"  
  
Harry felt the car lift from the ground as Bill pulled the shift stick to the elevation setting. "Bill, didn't you know? Your mom's a Legilimens. We can't lie to her. If she asks us, you're in trouble."  
  
"I'm old enough to not worry, Harry. She'll yell about it and that's it. Relax and enjoy the ride. Now, where's the cinema theater from here..." 


	10. Chapter Ten: Open Until Midnight

Author's Notes: This chapter contains scenes and characters from the 1995 (US release date) teen artificial angst movie "Empire Records," which in some respects is a lot like the uber-classic "Clerks" but in color and without references to the number 37. The "Empire Records" screenplay is by Carol Heikkinen, movie directed by Allan Moyle.  
  
Chapter Ten: Open Until Midnight  
  
Parking garages exist in Guildford, but none of them have a landing strip for flying cars. Bill had to dodge a few vehicles, nearly hitting a Jaguar XJ40 before swerving into an empty spot on the upper level of the Bedford Road Car Park. "There, you see," he crowed. "I told you parking was easy."  
  
Harry slowly lifted his head from the crouching position he had taken during the approach. "I hate to think how you did on the parallel parking section of your license exam," he muttered.  
  
The Anglia emerged to a visible state, and the four exited. The air felt muggy, just sitting there, even this far up where Harry thought there ought to be a breeze. The sun remained far above the horizon, at least another hour before the sunset colors would blanket the sky. "Air conditioning," Harry mumbled to himself.  
  
"What eez that?" Fleur asked.  
  
"Oh. Air conditioning. Cinemas are notoriously nice places with air conditioning," Harry noted.  
  
"He means cool air pumped through pipes," Bill added, walking up to his date and taking her hand. "Let's get you indoors before your hair gets all frazzled."  
  
Fleur screeched much like a 14-year-old and hopped onto Bill's back, as he hurried her off to the elevator doors across the parking level. Harry watched them run off like children, slowly walking the path they took, and he turned somewhat nervously toward Luna.  
  
Luna kept her face forward in the direction they needed to go, but her eyes would glance over to Harry with every other blink. Eventually she smiled a bit and faced him as the two walked. "You can relax, Harry. I don't need to be carried."  
  
"Oh. Well it's... Well I guess I'm okay with that," Harry smiled back. But he gave it some thought, and a few seconds later he shyly reached his hand about a foot or two from his body. Toward Luna. Offering to hold hands with her.  
  
Luna's arm moved slightly, then a little more closer, finally reaching out with her hand to clasp his. They both dropped their arms to their sides, the act drawing them rather close to each other, and they walked like that for a few seconds until Harry glanced at Luna's face again. Her smile, Harry was seeing that smile again, just before Luna let go of his hand. But they were still walking very close to each other.  
  
Harry glanced down to her necklace of seashells. "Luna. You didn't have to get rid of your butterbeer caps."  
  
"I don't mind, Harry." Her dreamy voice remained steady. "And it's my decision. I do know it looks weird."  
  
"Well... But it's you, isn't it?"  
  
"So's this." Luna's smile lightened. "Actually, it's my mother's."  
  
Harry couldn't say anything. He was feeling the same awkwardness he had when discussions about Cedric would emerge whenever he and Cho... Yeah, very awkward, Harry noted. Worries about getting off on the wrong foot again echoed in his brain.  
  
And then, all of a sudden Luna grabbed his hand again as they kept walking.  
  
The elevator ride down went rather quietly, as Bill and Fleur hugged each other and as Harry and Luna kept smiling modestly at each other. They reached the street level and hurried out into the crowds that moved along the city's walkways, finding their way toward the Odeon Cineplex. At one corner just in view of the River Wey, Harry hurried over to Bill. "I need to talk to you for a moment."  
  
As the girls kept going toward the river to get a better view, Harry glanced at Bill with a guilty look. "Bill, I can pay for the movies tonight, you and your parents don't have to..."  
  
"If you're worried about my family being poor," Bill interrupted, a serious expression upon his brow, "don't. I am gainfully employed and can very well take care of Fleur. I was willing to help out with you, but if you want..."  
  
"That's alright, I just... It's my date with Luna, so I should take care of her, at least, by myself. You think?"  
  
"Why not?" Bill grinned at that moment. "And about your uncle's window?"  
  
"Well, I'll pay for that too," Harry noted in a low voice. "You didn't have anything to do with that, and neither did your parents."  
  
"Ah, but I know who did," Bill answered, still grinning. "And with the profits they'd made on all those pranks they sold to drive Umbridge out of Hogwarts, I was going to make sure they'd start taking care of the consequences of some of their shenanigans."  
  
"Oh, I dunno," Harry groaned. "Are they still in trouble with the goblins after what I'd said last week?"  
  
"No," Bill nodded, and he would know as a Gringotts employee. "But they don't know that. I've gotten my bosses to sweat 'em out a little. By next Monday they'll be just a tad more humble and a little eager to help out, you think?"  
  
Harry arched an eyebrow. "Maybe. But what about Ron? He was there too..."  
  
"Not his fault. You're his friend." Bill patted Harry on the shoulder. "Let's get going, we've got two girls wondering why we're not paying attention to them..."  
  
Turnout for the film wasn't so bad, most attendees at the Odeon were there for an alien invasion movie. Even Fleur got caught up in the crowd's momentum. "Beell, this film we are zeeing, does it 'ave explosions and gun fights?"  
  
"Uh, no?"  
  
"Oh." She grabbed Bill and dragged him over to the line waiting for alien invasion flick. "Bye, 'Arry, bye Luna! Enjoy your movie!"  
  
Getting the tickets was easy. Getting the sodas took awhile because of the crowds, but the lines moved rather fast. Getting good seats in the theater was ridiculously easy, Harry and Luna finding good spots in the middle of the uppermost row of seat.  
  
Getting Luna to settle down took some work. "So where are the sounds coming from? It's like they're right behind that white wall with the constantly changing portraits."  
  
"Look along the ceiling," Harry pointed to the speaker boxes placed here and there. "That's where the sound comes from, and they've got it so you get the impression that the sounds are coming from the screen, that's what that white wall, it's like a curtain."  
  
The questions kept coming. "Is this part of the movie yet, Harry? Should we be expecting more people? Why does the floor feel like it's covered in Spellotape?   
  
Harry tried to answer but the questions went by quickly and Harry was attempting to think the right words to say. Luna then looked up and saw the shafts of light coming from the projector room just behind them? "What's that light for?"  
  
"That's how the movie appears on the screen, Luna. Wait, let me explain. I think I said this earlier, but hold on. In film, they have a series of frozen images that capture people in action, and what they do is move each frozen image very quickly through what's called a projector. The projector has a bright light that shines through the series of images. And as the images move, it gives the illusion that the people on those images are moving. You'll understand when we start seeing it."  
  
"Let me see now," Luna answered, still focused on the light. She stood and raised her hands, reaching into the beams and casting shadows onto the screen. Luna gasped as she watched the colors and patterns of the preview advertisements change upon her fingers and palms. She wasn't aware that there were a few other people in the theater with them, and one of them sitting in the middle row grouched, "Hey! Sit the eff down!"  
  
"Luna!" Harry hissed, and reached out, grabbing her by the waist and attempting to pull her back to her seat. Instead, she seemingly lost her balance and tipped one way, then the other. Finally, she landed harshly but neatly onto Harry's lap.  
  
His hands had moved from wrapping her waist. One arm went around her shoulders, cradling her from the fall, and the other arm slid slightly down one of her legs to steady her. The hand on her leg came upon the skin of her thigh, as the skirt of her dress had slid up just slightly above her knees. It was a perfectly innocent move on Harry's part, he was merely making sure Luna didn't get hurt.  
  
Still, he wasn't even wondering if he ought to move that hand.  
  
Their faces were very close, and Harry could see a very small mole, not even a bump, just below her left eye. You wouldn't even notice it under normal circumstances. Her breath came and went in short gasps, and Harry's glasses fogged up, at least the right lens did, and it did hamper the amount of eye contact the two teens were attempting. Finally, her breathing slowed to normal, and Luna whispered, "Sorry about the fall, Harry."  
  
He finally noticed where his hands were and moved the arm along her legs out of the way so she could get back to her seat. "Well, it's a good thing I left my soda in the armrest," Harry answered sheepishly. "But Luna, let's...settle down and wait for the film to start, please."  
  
"Oh. I guess I should then," she answered back, getting into her seat and adjusting herself with three or four hops, straightening something out, perhaps her skirt. She took her soda from its armrest and made a loud slurping noise through the drinking straw. "Odd flavor, this root. Doesn't make for a very good butterbeer substitute."  
  
Harry got more comfortable when the movie previews started, and Luna fell quiet as she watched and watched. Soon the Feature Presentation sign flashed and Harry whispered, "Here's the movie itself. Here we go."  
  
Luna glanced at him and was about to ask something, then paused and whispered back. "Let's not go. Let's stay, Harry."  
  
The summary of the movie was this: a small independently owned music store in the East Coast United States was going through one of its daily crises. The store's money had been gambled away, an always-evil multinational corporation was threatening to take over the universe, the kids who work there were undergoing the kinds of stress and relationship conflicts that made teenagers so much fun to watch, and to top it all off, it was Rex Manning Day.  
  
Harry found himself laughing, but not uncontrollably, at some of the antics the characters were indulging themselves in. He did find the overly witty banter going on between the teens rather clever. He took time every so often to watch Luna's reactions, and he noted she was focusing very hard on the images flashing before her. She did ask at one point, in her normal voice, "What's the big deal about Rex Manning?"  
  
"Shh!" the jerk from the middle row answered her harshly. Harry tapped her hand to get her attention. "We've got to whisper, Luna. No loud noises, okay?"  
  
"Okay," she whispered back. "So who is Rex Manning?"  
  
The shoplifter scene definitely caught her attention, as the Zen wannabe character Lucas approached a juvenile music thief. As the shoplifter fled for his life with Lucas dogging his every step, the blonde character Gina that Luna thought could be British made a store-wide announcement: "Attention Rex Manning fans, to your left you will notice a shoplifter being chased by night manager Lucas. This young man will be caught, deep fried in a vat of hot oil, and served to our first hundred customers. Just another tasty treat from the gang at Empire Records."  
  
"Ahh!" Luna shouted. "They're promoting cannibalism!"  
  
That got a huge wave of laughter from most of the audience in attendance, except for the jerk in the middle row that answered back, "Shut up!"  
  
Harry remembered the rule about not using magic in front of Muggles, but he started wondering if he could get away with the old-fashioned tossing of the soda in his hands at that jerk.  
  
Luna calmed down when she learned that the shoplifter wasn't going to be served up as a treat, and nodded when she found out his name was Warren Beatty: "Oh, I've heard of him," she whispered. "But isn't he older?"  
  
Harry tried to settle down himself to enjoy the movie. He was having a problem, though, with the relationship stuff on the screen, it just seemed so ridiculous to him. That one guy pining for that girl, the one Luna thought was an elf, seriously, he should have just said something, and at least well before the events going on that day. He much preferred the twisted antics of getting Rex Manning Day to go off without a hitch.  
  
"No, seriously," Luna whispered during the autograph session. "Who's Rex Manning?"  
  
Harry didn't much care for the part of the movie where the elvish girl went all psycho to serve Rex Manning his lunch ("Warren's still in one piece, isn't he?" Luna whispered), and then he got flat out confused when, even after Rex had suggested a rather rude act (that Harry didn't quite get anyway), which had driven her to run away in anger, that she would get more psychotic when her almost-British coworker DID make out with Rex.  
  
"He's not worth it," Harry whispered, shaking his head. "Why fight over a guy with a hairstyle even Flock Of Seagulls avoided using?"  
  
At least the relationship squabbling gave way to what Harry felt was a classic moment in teen angst cinema: the airhead character Mark suffering a hallucinogenic moment and watching a monstrously dressed metal band named GWAR invite him into the TV and join the band. Luna's expression when seeing the band was one of mild discomfort, but said nothing.  
  
Harry watched with a big grin, however, even when GWAR's frontman announced, "Mark, man, you play a mean guitar, man. It's really a shame that NOW you must DIE!"  
  
"That is rather sad," Luna watched as the mutated drum set consumed Mark. "His axe handling skills should have saved him from the pagan ritual. Good guitarists are hard to find."  
  
"Will you SHUT UP?" The jerk in the middle row shouted back at her.  
  
Harry stood up, but Luna's hand touched his. He looked down to see her blink a few times, actually thinking it over. "No."  
  
And the rest of the theater audience applauded when she said that. The jerk in the middle row tried glowering at everybody surrounding him, then finally sat down in a huff.  
  
The movie got to be a little more enjoyable from then on, even though Luna did stop making loud comments during the rest of the viewing. The bald Wiccan-looking girl tried to enjoy her own funeral, the juvenile shoplifter returned to shoot up the place and ask for a job, the kids all rallied together to save the music store, relationship issues were resolved, and all was made right with the world as the credits rolled.  
  
While most of the audience packed it in, Harry and Luna kept watching: after all, the film was still showing scenes of two store employees arguing over the future of rock and roll, even with a car crashing into something off-camera. Finally, the credits over, as the theater lights brightened, Harry and Luna saw they were the last ones there. "So, what do you think?" Harry asked.  
  
"I don't know," Luna answered after a few moments. "It could have used more of the Ramones."  
  
Chapter Eleven: The Opposite of Rage  
  
I will be traveling to San Diego this weekend. There will be significant delays in finishing the next chapter. Please enjoy the chamber music I am piping through your computer while you wait. ("Girl from Ipanema" begins playing soothingly) 


	11. Chapter Eleven: The Opposite Of Rage

Author's Notes: As "The Girl from Ipanema" plays for the 13,529 th time, washing over the screams of the eternally damned waiting for the next chapter installment, the writer, coughing slightly as he recovers from the strep throat that has been bugging him for two weeks, sits down before the computer to begin Chapter 11 of "Harry Potter and the Awkward Date." Suddenly, he realizes he hasn't filed his homestead exemption forms with the county's Property Appraiser, and the writer frantically searches for his deed and mortgage papers before... Just as suddenly, Mizz-Reads-Alot, Rashaka, and David305 reach across the sub-ether and trout-slap the writer whilst shouting "Get on with it!!! And shut off the bloody Muzak!!!"  
  
Ow! Ow! Okay...here we go...Oh, wait, here's my voter registration address change form I need to fill out... (KittenOfDoom jinxes the writer with a Bat-Bogey hex) Ahh! Not with my sinuses! Alright, alright!...  
  
Chapter Eleven: The Opposite of Rage  
  
Harry shook off the little bits of popcorn stuck to his sneakers as he exited the Odeon onto the riverwalk courtyard. Luna waited until the two of them reached a bench where she could sit and examine her sandals more closely. "Ah," she sighed, "is this part of the film-going experience? Cleaning the soles of your shoes?"  
  
"Ah, well," Harry tried to smile, "it happens. I hope I'm not ruining your good shoes."  
  
"You shouldn't apologize," Luna noted, taking a handkerchief from her small cloth-weave handbag. "These little...what are they called again?"  
  
"Popcorn."  
  
"Yes. I remember now." Luna knocked the sandal in her hand against the bench, letting the sticky gray pieces fly in every other direction. "We didn't order these. Someone else dropped them."  
  
"Well, I'm surprised they didn't clean the floors off from the earlier showings," Harry added, glancing down at the hem of Luna's summer dress. "Uh, you may want to make sure the pieces aren't sticking to your dress there."  
  
Harry looked up as Luna patted herself along the backs of her legs, checking for debris. He wondered if Bill and Fleur had left yet from the alien invasion movie. "Luna, wait here, let me check on something." He stood and walked a ways toward the ticket booth, then turned. "Luna, are you going to be all right here?"  
  
Luna did not look at him as she was now crossing her other leg up, reaching to take off her other popcorn-covered sandal. Harry quickly glanced upward toward her eyes, which he couldn't spot as her hair now veiled her face, except for the slight smile he could spot through the strands. "I will be fine here, Harry. Go ahead and check on Bill."  
  
Harry found out from the ticket vendor that the alien movie wouldn't let out for another half-hour. He returned to the bench to find Luna now standing, her sandals and skirt now cleaned of popcorn.  
  
"So," she noted, slightly smiling and avoiding eye contact as usual, "where do we go from here?"  
  
"We ought to wait here," Harry answered. "The other film's going to be awhile, and we're supposed to be chaperoned tonight. We need to wait for Bill and Fleur."  
  
"Oh." Luna nodded, then turned to look at the nearby river. Twilight had just secured the sky from sunset, and street lamps across the city of Guildford had long been on, blurring out the starry sky. But one could see the ripples of the river's surface, the occasional boat coasting along with couples and friends celebrating another weekend together. Music and laughter from the bars and restaurants surrounding the riverside drifted through nighttime air no longer as muggy as the afternoon had been.  
  
Luna walked over to the riverside, watching the water, and Harry followed, glancing over her shoulder. "Are you looking for something?"  
  
"Yes. The star light." Luna glanced upward, seeking the moon, its phase growing bigger just past the half-moon shading. "All these lights, it's so hard to see sometimes."  
  
"Odd thing, being in a city, even this size, not like London, you probably can't see anything at night there." Harry answered. "We're used to being at Hogwarts so far out from civilization, the night sky's a lot better out there. And the suburbs I'm in, it's not as bad as this, you can see some of the brighter ones. How's it like out where you live?"  
  
"Well, it's just like at the Weasleys, and I think Ginny's said you've stayed over once or twice," Luna noted, still looking upward.  
  
"Yeah, that's true, but I didn't do much stargazing when I was there." Harry noticed a couple walking past them, giggling about something, and glanced about, checking the ebb and flow of the crowds coming out of or going in to the theater. Most everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.  
  
Harry caught a sound on the wind, a piano tune, if he knew his music well enough it felt like the blues, but it was too up-tempo. He turned slowly, figuring out where the music came from, spotting a pub just a ways upriver with open windows and doors, a good crowd gathering there.  
  
"Hmm," Luna sighed dreamily, just over Harry's shoulder. "Music."  
  
Harry smiled and turned back to face her. "Luna, you having fun yet?"  
  
Luna blinked a few times, then her smile faded. "I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?"  
  
Harry's smile faded as well. "No, you didn't. I'm just checking, I just... I'd like to make sure you're doing okay. I mean, I don't think... I'm worried you might not have enjoyed the movie..."  
  
"Did you enjoy the movie, Harry?"  
  
"Well, it was okay, but not great. But did you like the movie? I mean, it was why... Well, you wanted to see a movie, and I just want to know if you enjoyed the experience or not..."  
  
Luna didn't answer. Harry started worrying, he had done something wrong, hadn't he, asked the wrong question, got off on the wrong topic perhaps. He was lousy at this, this was the second girl in a row he'd upset somehow...  
  
Luna turned, but not to walk away, to glance at something in the sky, and then she circled about, ending a few feet closer to Harry. "It was my first time," she sighed, "and I can't really say if it was a good movie to enjoy. I'll need to see more to get a better comparison."  
  
"Well, okay, but...well..." Harry stammered. "But are you... I mean, just overall, are you having fun yet? The whole night so far, I mean."  
  
"Well, yes, I am having fun," Luna's smile return, not as noticeable as usual. "And there is the rest of the night to go, Harry, there's probably something else we can do..."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"I don't know." Luna's dreamy visage returned and she glanced up again at the night sky. "That's why there's still some time left."  
  
The piano music in the distance switched to another song, this one as up-tempo as before, perhaps faster. Luna started humming to herself, measuring the song in her head, taking note of the notes. And as she hummed her smile got brighter, more noticeable, shaping up much like the smile Harry liked seeing on her...  
  
Pain. The scar flared. Harry doubled over, then arched his back, stumbling away from Luna and the riverbank. Pain. Rage. His mind was on fire. His flesh burned, and that voice, that terrible cold voice, pounded against his skull. HAVING FUN WHILE THE WORLD BURNS, BOY???  
  
Voldemort was attacking him, attacking his mind. Harry struggled, pushing his feet away from everyone, seeking a corner somewhere, must hide, must think...  
  
I can read your mind, Potter, you foolish child. I can see everything. I have your thoughts now, I have YOU...  
  
Must hide, must... Harry's scar burned, his nerves felt every moment of pain he'd ever known, and he kept moving, heading past the theater, finding a corner, an alleyway of theater exits, somewhere to concentrate, to fight...  
  
You can't fight me, boy! I've already won! Hogwarts has been shattered to the last stone! This is my victory performance, Potter, a nice little denouement after the main battle! A nice little reminder to you that I've got you right where I want you...  
  
Harry fell to his knees. He had to focus... Focus on the Occlumens spell. Occlumens, my mind... my mind is not yours...  
  
"I have you," a voice hissed through his vocal cords, and Harry shuddered in both pain and fear as he realized Voldemort was talking through him now. "I have you, boy. I can throw yourself against the wall, I can drown you, I can kill you any way I like..."  
  
My mind... My body, Harry thought. I... And the pain hit him harder. Harry refocused, tried to refocus. Failed. The pain seized every inch of his body.  
  
"Harry?" Luna's voice echoed down the alleyway. "You're in pain, Harry. Tonks warned me. Mrs. Weasley too. She seemed really upset it could ruin your evening, Harry..."  
  
Harry felt his muscles strain against his will, as his body turned ever so slightly to face her. He heard the snakelike hiss through his own teeth, knowing it wasn't his voice coming. "He's dead, girl. I'm finishing him off once and for all. You can scream if you like, for I am your death as well as his!..."  
  
Harry saw Luna close to him, but through a fog of pain and dark thoughts, as though he was so far distant from her. But he could hear her above the whispered venom of Voldemort's words, as she glanced at him with a sad, somewhat wistful stare. "Hello. You must be Tom Riddle."  
  
The snarling in Harry's head stopped, and for a moment Harry felt nothing. Then a powerful surge of rage flowed through his mind, his head, his bones and flesh, to every inch of him. Ahh, that name, never that name...  
  
"Yes. Ginny mentioned you, from that diary she had. Tom Riddle is your name."  
  
Voldemort's rage seized control of Harry's body, and he felt himself stand upright through the pain. It wasn't Harry's voice that snarled through his teeth, "How dare you...how DARE you utter that abominable name..."  
  
"Why should you hate that name?" Luna asked, and Harry could tell she was genuinely curious. "It's the name your mother gave you."  
  
Voldemort roared from wherever he was hiding, the echo of it rattling through Harry's throat. Harry noticed his arms rising, his fists clenching, grabbing, wanting to grab, wanting to strangle, to inflict pain, to...  
  
No, Harry screamed within his head, screaming at Voldemort, fighting harder than before. No! I won't hurt her!...  
  
Harry's body moved closer to Luna, who wasn't moving. Harry could see her standing there, her eyes still dreamily unfocused, a few strands of her hair wiggling a bit against the night wind, the slight, ever growing glow from around her neck, and...  
  
The glow. Harry felt his own flesh, somehow warm, and his arms dropped to his sides, as he watched the seashell necklace draped around Luna's slim neck appear brighter in his eyes. The raging animal within his mind, within his body, flailed more violently along his ragged nerves. He took one step back.  
  
Luna's eyes lost their dream-like aspect as she stared right at him. "Hello, Harry. That is you, isn't it?"  
  
"Yeah." Harry nodded, but his body was fighting, in pain, rebelling, Voldemort pushing hard to break the wall building in his mind. "Luna, run. Go...go find Bill. Get help. Get Dumbledore, ahhh, my head...Luna, I don't want to hurt you. He wants to hurt you. Luna. Luna! Run!"  
  
"Shh." Luna put a finger to her lips, then moved her hand across her face to push the loose strands from her eyes. "Harry. Shh. It's all in your head."  
  
Harry forced himself down on one knee, trying to keep himself from moving at all. The pain in his head was growing again. "Luna! Run! Voldemort's going to...ahhhh!"  
  
"Voldemort's not here, Harry." Luna took a step closer. She seemed radiant in Harry's eyes. "You are, Harry. Mrs. Weasley told me. It's all in your head, Harry."  
  
Harry nodded. The Occlumens training. He had to... He had to fight back. He had to focus...The rage of Voldemort arced through his nerves and Harry collapsed against the hard wall of the theater. His Occlumens...training...pain...the hurt...the rage...emotions...Occlumency...Mrs. Weasley taught that...the emotion of rage...Occlumency wasn't about controlling your thoughts...  
  
Harry forced a smile on his lips. It was about controlling your emotions.  
  
Voldemort's rage pounded against his skull, but Harry focused on his emotions, focused on what he could, focusing against that rage, seeking its opposite, something to counter the Dark Lord's power to fight back. And then he felt Luna's hand on his shoulder. "Harry," she whispered, leaning in close to his ear, "stand up."  
  
He placed his hand over hers, steadying himself with the other hand, and he pushed with his knees, skidding up the rough surface of the wall behind him. Harry stared at Luna, who stared back. "Harry," she whispered, still radiant. "will you need any help with your Occlumens?"  
  
Harry gasped, feeling the rage burn in his mind. "No. Just need...need to focus...he's angry...I can...can feel that anger..."  
  
"Then don't be."  
  
Harry blinked, closed his eyes, trying to focus without focusing, but how do you do that? How to... Stop that, his voice grumbled to himself. You're panicking. Calm down.  
  
And just like that his mind cleared. Harry opened his eyes, feeling the rage recede like a rolling tide. No, it was still there, but it didn't hurt as much. "Luna, it's working," he whispered, "I can feel it happening..."  
  
And just like that the pain surged into him, Voldemort's screaming rage pressing against the skull like an explosion. Harry's eyes squeezed shut and he felt the wall against his back.  
  
Calm, he thought to himself. Calm down. Peace. Be at peace. And again the rage receded. Harry gasped for air, smiled, stayed calm. He blinked a few times, and watched Luna watching him, noticing her concern fade as her dream-like gaze returned.  
  
Voldemort's voice hissed in Harry's mind, I'm still here in your head, boy. Let that scar of yours burn in torment and fear. I'm STILL IN YOUR HEAD! But the voice wasn't as loud as before, and the rage was like a scratch against the skin.  
  
Harry stayed calm, focusing on almost no emotion or thought. Well, he was still smiling for a reason, his hand still clasping Luna's to his shoulder as he watched Luna's odd comforting little smile return. And he just remembered something too, and his smile widened as the lesson he learned not from Mrs. Weasley but from Yoda, that a Jedi will know when he is calm, at peace...  
  
What madness is this? This Yoda knows nothing of power! Voldemort's voice echoed in Harry's mind, much smaller than before. You child, you waste of flesh, you think of worthless lessons and clueless wisdom that will not avail you when I crush your very soul, boy...  
  
You should get out more, go rent those movies or something, Harry thought, and felt it as his thought bounced against whatever little shadow Voldemort cast in his mind. And that shadow wavered, in pain, perhaps in fear...  
  
He laughed out loud, making Luna's smile break into a wide grin as well, and just as the Dark Lord tried to surge back with his rage into Harry's mind, it was pushed back almost effortlessly.  
  
A funny, almost nasty thought tickled Harry's mind, but he knew it was his own. Hey, Tom! You still in my head?  
  
Voldemort's rage swirled impotently, his hatred of his birth name inducing a shriek of pain that Harry could barely hear.   
  
You may be in my head, but I'm in yours too. I know that. I've been there. And Harry smiled recklessly. What does YOUR scar look like?  
  
Legilimens! Harry's thought was like a shout in his mind. Yes, he knew somewhere in the back of that mind that he hadn't been fully trained for this, only for Occlumens, but they all kept saying that you could learn one and learn the other, and that perhaps the spells were more similar than they let on. And besides, when did the rules ever apply to Voldemort and him?...  
  
Harry blinked, just as the images flashed through his mind: a dark, noise-filled hallway filled with orphans chattering endlessly about useless Muggle things; The Sorting Hat on the boy's head whispering, warning perhaps, that he shouldn't consider Slytherin, but he knew that was where he would find himself, find his path to power; a darkly beautiful woman with a recognizable bloodcurdling screech pointing at him, cursing him for being a filthy lying Mudblood and deceiving her; he was writhing on a dungeon floor as a Germanic voice intoned the Cruciatus Curse, but it was wrong, he was there to help, Grindelwald needed his help to kill Dumbledore; a thin-faced young man in what had to be an Auror's uniform with messy dark hair that looked so familiar to Harry, standing upon a mountainside crevice looking down at him as he snapped a wand in two, exposing the entwined strands of unicorn and wolf hairs, and Harry could feel the rage building again, the desire to return from this humiliation, seize a more powerful wand for himself, and to curse this Potter fool and doom him to a grisly death...  
  
And then, as a door slamming closed, the thoughts shattered, fell apart, faded.  
  
Harry shook his head, the buzz of energy dissipating. The pain had gone, as had the echoing screams of Lord Voldemort. There was just one thought of the Dark Lord sticking in Harry's mind: I will kill you, Potter.  
  
Luna's hand slipped from his shoulder, but she clasped the hand he had placed over hers. "You seem at peace, Harry. Is Voldemort gone?"  
  
Harry nodded, then paused. "Luna. You're not afraid to say his name."  
  
"Of course not." Luna turned away to look at the crowd of people exiting the theater. "Hermione kept telling us, didn't she, during all those Defense lessons? 'Fear of the name is intended to ensure fear of the person.' And it's not his real name anyway, Ginny told me that. How can you be afraid of a made-up name?"  
  
Harry smiled at her, somehow knowing she could see it even if she was glancing in the other direction. "You're rather brave for what you did, Luna. Why aren't you in Gryffindor?"  
  
Luna looked over her shoulder at him. "Well, the Sorting Hat wanted to, but I told it I was lousy at Quidditch, so there you go, Harry."  
  
"There they are!" Bill's voice sounded across the courtyard as he and Fleur made their way through the crowd. "Harry! Luna! This way? Anyone up for dinner?"  
  
Still holding hands, Harry and Luna walked over to the other couple, with Fleur grinning as she spied the younger pair and what they were doing. "And 'ow was the movie, you two?"  
  
"Could have used more of the Ramones," Luna answered. Fleur looked confused but Bill grinned.  
  
"So?" Bill nodded. "Where do we go from here?"  
  
Chapter Twelve: Return to the Burrow 


	12. Chapter Twelve: Return to the Burrow

Chapter Twelve: Return to the Burrow  
  
It was close to midnight before they returned to the car park.  
  
A nice little French restaurant had been found a few blocks away from the theater, and Fleur was delighted to attempt to order from the menu in her native tongue. The staff, being British union labor, weren't entirely thrilled but worked well to earn a good tip.  
  
From dinner, the two couples strolled along the streets, and as a Friday night deep into summer, the sidewalks were crowded. Near the pubs such crowds were noticeably drunk.  
  
"Firewhiskey?" Luna asked, as they watched a particular pub hopper locate a convenient gutter.  
  
"Mmm, no." Bill answered, taking a step closer and sniffing the air. "I think it's German. If I recognize the brand."  
  
"Is it any good?" Harry asked, but just then the pub hopper reacted negatively to whatever it was he drank.  
  
After everyone went "Eeew," Bill added, "Let's...move on, shall we?..."  
  
They circled about the streets of Guildford, Harry and Luna in front with Bill and Fleur hanging back a bit, keeping an eye out as chaperones were supposed to do. Not for any need for security, just to make sure the younger couple behaved.  
  
Harry had informed Bill during dinner about what had happened. The elder Weasley sibling worriedly interrogated Harry for a few minutes to make sure he was all right, and it took a while for Harry to convince Bill that he was certain You-Know-Who wasn't going to try something like that any time soon. If Harry was worried about anything, it was Voldemort's insistence that Hogwarts had been destroyed.  
  
"But he had lied before," Harry noted, not so much for Bill's benefit but for his own. "I think he was just saying that to rattle my head some more..."  
  
Still, Harry mused, it would be nice to have an owl show up so they could send word back to someone, the Weasley parents or maybe even Dumbledore, to let them know what had happened and whether or not Hogwarts and the people there were safe.  
  
Harry didn't think too much about all of that during the walk, however. He was, well, distracted by the attention he was giving Luna. Once in awhile during the walk about Guildford they found each other very close, almost touching, and Harry was tempted to wrap an arm about her to bring Luna closer to him. But he reminded himself to behave like a gentleman, and wasn't too sure that was something gentlemen did. At least on a first date.  
  
He didn't even notice it at the time that he was thinking of this night as a first date, or that the thought of more nights like this didn't bother him.  
  
Mostly, they talked, well, Harry did most of the talking. He felt a little uncomfortable whenever the talking stopped and they found each other staring at each other with silent smiles on their faces. He would ask Luna a question, or point something out in one of the storefronts they passed, or something, anything, to shake the awkwardness he felt in those silent smiling moments.  
  
After a few hours of that, the street they were on led them back to the car park. "It's late, people," Bill noted. "We ought to get back home."  
  
This time, Bill let Harry and Luna take the back seat, with Fleur siding up next to Bill as he started up the Anglia and switched on the invisibility control. "I guess we're flying again," Luna whispered in her dreamy voice.  
  
"Yeah, I suppose," Harry whispered back. "At least his takeoffs are better than his landings..."  
  
Harry didn't notice which direction the car was flying for the first few minutes, he noticed instead the awkward silence as Luna sat there next to him, leaning just close enough that he could lean over to let her head rest on his shoulder. "Well, Luna, I just wanted to ask you about..."  
  
"Shh," Luna interrupted, raising her finger to her lips once more. "Shh. You don't have to talk all the time, Harry."  
  
She then lowered her hand and placed it gently on top of Harry's resting on the seat between them. Harry blushed and said nothing.  
  
He glanced out the window, watching the horizon weave and tilt as the Ford Anglia flew. From what he knew of the terrain, and his internal sense of direction, Harry realized that they were heading west, towards Ottery St. Catchpole. This confused him a bit, wouldn't it be easier to drop him off at Privet Drive, which was closer to Guildford? He thought to ask Bill, then took a moment, and realized Bill had his reasons for doing this. So Harry slid back into his seat to get comfortable, and found himself sliding a little closer to Luna. Very close to Luna, actually, as her head finally came to rest on Harry's shoulder.  
  
Harry lowered his head slowly, lining up his eyesight to Luna's face, watching her expression. She was smiling in that comforting, perfectly conspicuous way that made Harry realize he needed to read more poetry so he could get an idea how to describe exactly how good it made him feel to see it.  
  
For the rest of the drive back to Ottery, as Luna asked, they didn't talk. They did, however, blink more than once at each other, although Harry wasn't keeping count, right up to the point where Luna closed her eyes, rubbed her head against Harry's shoulder to find a more comfortable spot, and fell asleep. Harry did the gentlemanly thing of keeping watch.  
  
Or at least he tried. His head shook as the car landed somewhere, stirring him from his rest. The Ford Anglia came to a stop in front of a cozy looking two story farmhouse. A sign hung over the door but it was too dark to read it. Only one window was lit, around the corner from the front of the house, possibly the kitchen. "Harry," Bill whispered as he leaned over to the back seat, "is Luna asleep?"  
  
"Not anymore, Bill." Luna gently lifted her head up, blinking her eyes as she glanced out the window to the house. "This is home, Harry."  
  
"Okay," Harry answered.  
  
"Harry," Bill hissed at him.  
  
"What?"  
  
"The door."  
  
"Oh." Harry shook his head, reached for the handle, and pushed his door open. He held the door for Luna, standing there for about a minute while Luna smiled at him and Bill glared at him.  
  
Bill shook his head slowly, measuring each turn of his chin. "Harry. Go and open the door on her side."  
  
"Oh." Harry grimaced and slammed his door shut. Hurrying around the car, he reached to open Luna's passenger side door, only to find that Luna had reached over and locked it on him. He jiggled the handle a few times before politely tapping on the window. "Luna, could you please unlock your door so I can open it?"  
  
She sat and smiled at him for another half-minute before reaching over to unlock it. Finally Harry got it open, and after thinking about it he reached in with one hand. "May I assist you, Miss Luna?"  
  
"You may assist, Mister Harry," Luna replied, and took his hand. He guided her out from her seat and had her standing there right close to him. "I do thank you, Mister Harry. Now, may I pass so I can get inside my father's house so I can be properly yelled at for being out so late?"  
  
Harry reacted to that. "He's not going to yell at you, is he?"  
  
"No, but he is up, isn't he? I suppose he'll be worried where I've been so late."  
  
The two walked slowly to the front door. As they approached, a lamp hanging slightly above that door brightened, allowing Harry to read the sign: LOVEGOOD ABODE. QUIBBLER INQUIRIES 'ROUND BACK. BEWARE OF MOG.  
  
"Who's Mog?" Harry asked.  
  
"The pet hedgehog," Luna sighed. "He's a Portmeirion breed, quite intelligent and aggressive. He's usually good for scaring off the encyclopedia salesmen."  
  
"He won't attack teenage wizards, will he?"  
  
"Only if you're selling encyclopedias. And maybe dictionaries. All other books, you'll be fine," she answered. "So here we are. The door."  
  
Harry nodded, glancing between Luna and the front door. "Yeah, the front door. Your door. Good, solid, steady door I hope."  
  
The door swung open, a hall light switched on behind a tall, slightly balding but long-haired man approaching the entry. "It shouldn't have been that long a film, was it?" the man asked.  
  
Harry waved rather awkwardly at Luna's father Keeley. "Hello, sir. Ah, well, I suppose we could have called or something..."  
  
"Hold on there," Keeley interrupted, stepping from the hallway onto his doorstep. "Hmm, yes, I can see the scar there, yes, Harry Potter all right. Now, is that THE Harry Potter or A Harry Potter?"  
  
"What?" Harry shook his head, just a little bit confused.  
  
"Well, you probably get many people gasping 'You're THE Harry Potter,' but I do know for a fact there's at least nine other Harry Potters in Canada alone. Not that many Harry Potters in China, mind you, but I haven't finished translating all of their phone books yet." Keeley grinned after that, offering a hand to Harry. "I hope you two behaved tonight, Harry Potter."  
  
"Ah, well, uh, yes sir, we behaved," Harry answered, shaking his hand. "Sorry about it being late."  
  
"Well, as it's being late, I'll give you only two minutes to say your farewells, tonight." Keeley nodded to his daughter. "Make it quick, or your tea will get cold. Good night, Harry."  
  
After her father closed the door, Luna turned to Harry and sighed with a smile. "Well, now you've met my father. What do you think?"  
  
Harry shrugged, figuring out the best thing he could say. "Well, he seems, well, nice."  
  
"That's sweet of you to say," Luna replied. "But he's loony."  
  
"Well, now, I wouldn't say that!..."  
  
"Well, I'm loony too, remember Harry. And I don't mind people calling me that."  
  
"Well, maybe it's his sense of humor," Harry answered, trying to keep his best foot forward.  
  
"Could be." Luna kept smiling, as best as Harry could tell in the dim lighting. "So. Here we are at the door."  
  
"Yeah, the door again." Harry paused, suddenly terrified of something he might have to do. But what could he do? If he tried kissing her it might be too forceful, or a handshake, but that's so...professional, isn't it? Maybe...  
  
Harry reached out both arms slowly, arcing about Luna. "Is it all right if I hug you, Luna?"  
  
Luna blinked twice. "A hug?"  
  
Harry paused again, backed up a foot. "Is that wrong for me to do?"  
  
"Well, yes."  
  
"Then what should I do?"  
  
Luna started laughing, the kind of acute laugh Harry once heard when she overreacted to Ron's imagined punishments for Goyle back on that train ride last year. Thankfully, this time she kept it short, wiping her mouth as she finished, even though a big grin remained there on her face. The grin relaxed a bit, so that the nice warm smile Harry had liked seeing on her was there again.  
  
And then Luna stepped closer to Harry, raising one hand to his left cheek, and reached up ever so slightly with her face, her chin grazing his just so, and placed a quick kiss on his right cheek. She leaned her head back, and waited.  
  
Harry wondered if he was still breathing, but just to make sure he parted his lips and exhaled. He noticed she was still smiling that warm, inviting smile, and he wondered again if he needed to do something he wasn't quite sure he needed to do.  
  
Oh, damn, he thought. He brought his right hand up, placing it on Luna's cheek just as her hand was on his, and he leaned forward, and with his lips slightly parted he kissed her.  
  
At least his aim was good, planting his lips upon hers, and he had measured the distance and energy needed, not pressing too hard or at an awkward angle. He couldn't entirely tell, having closed his eyes for some reason. He felt the warmth of her skin, the breath of air pressing through her nostrils, and noticed that she was gently pushing her lips into his kiss, responding in kind.   
  
He couldn't really notice much of anything else at the moment.   
  
Until he remembered that he, that she, that they had a time limit of sorts. Luna's tea was getting cold, after all.  
  
He slowed his kiss, leaned back a bit, letting go of her cheek, closed his mouth and pulled away. Luna leaned forward at first, then leaned back as well. Harry opened his eyes to see that Luna's were still closed, and he waited for her to open her eyes before apologizing. "Sorry if I, well, I hope it was okay that I, well..."  
  
"Are you apologizing?" she asked, in her familiar dreamy voice.  
  
"Yes. No. Maybe."  
  
Luna smiled and looked away. "My tea is getting cold, Harry. Good night."  
  
"Yeah." Harry answered quietly. "Good night."  
  
Luna opened her front door and stepped inside. She turned and faced Harry. "Thank you. For the cinema. For the kiss."  
  
"Oh." Harry smiled. "Thank you. For being there. For...being you, I suppose."  
  
"Good night, Harry." Luna closed the door.  
  
Harry stood there for a few minutes, maybe an hour. He didn't mind too much at the moment for checking the time. Bill had to interject at some point. "You would mind, Harry, if you started dancing back to the car like Gene Kelly would, you know, like in those musicals?"  
  
"Who's Gene Kelly?" Harry asked, not really wanting to know.  
  
"Someone who knew how to express what it's like when you kiss a girl and the kiss meant something, maybe everything. Anyway. It's late, Harry. Get back in the car."  
  
Harry did feel a little light on his feet as he got back into the Ford Anglia. He was pretty sure he was levitating on his own, since the car didn't really fly back to the Weasley residence and he was certain he was off the ground somehow.  
  
Bill pulled the Anglia up to the garage shed, and checked to see if Fleur was awake. She stirred, giving a few moments of conversation with Bill about something before she Disapparated to wherever she needed to go.  
  
"Let's head in," Bill sighed, walking to the doorway. The light in the kitchen was on here at the Burrow as well.  
  
Mr. Weasley was found at the kitchen table, head cradled in one arm while his other hand was wrapped around a lukewarm cup of coffee. "What, ah, boys!" He yawned. "Welcome back! Worried about where you were."  
  
"Ah, we were at the rave up in Barlow, dad, caused damage costing in the hundreds of billions," Bill answered.  
  
"Don't tell you mother that, you're in enough trouble as is." Mr. Weasley nodded to Harry. "You've been told the arrangements then, Harry?"  
  
"No, what arrangements?"  
  
"Ah, oh. Well," Mr. Weasley sat up in his chair, moving the coffee away from him. "Well, we considered you'll be a little late getting done with your date, so we sent word to your aunt and uncle that you'd stay here tonight."  
  
"Oh." Uh-oh, Harry thought to himself.  
  
"Now, Hermione helped with making the tellyphone call, so we did it proper this time. After some, ah, disagreements, we came to a mutual understanding and made sure your relatives will not mind as much when you got back tomorrow afternoon."  
  
Disagreements, which meant more threatening to send a werewolf friend for a visit, Harry sighed internally. "Ah, well. So I unpack here for the night."  
  
"Extra bed's been made and set up in Ron's room." Mr. Weasley smiled and stood. "I'd best be heading in too, it's been a long day for me as well. G'night, Harry."  
  
"Night," Harry waved as the Weasley patriarch headed for the stairwell. "So? Late night, wasn't it?"  
  
"Yeah," Bill answered. "Let's go. Ought to check up on Ron, I'm sure he's wondering how it went."  
  
Instead, oddly enough, Ron was found in the living room on the sofa. The odd thing was that papers and scrolls were strewn about, and it seemed he had actually done his schoolwork before drifting off to sleep.  
  
On closer inspection, it wasn't so odd, when Harry noticed, after moving around the room to get a better view, that Hermione was on the sofa with him, her schoolwork spread about as well.  
  
An odd song seemed to be playing in the background, and Harry noticed a large wooden cabinet in the corner had been opened. A row of strings were tied taut from top to bottom, and humming noises came from each string, a chorus of sound mixing into a melody of sorts. It seemed to Harry that Ron and Hermione had stayed up waiting, and had decided on some schoolwork while listening to wizard music.  
  
Bill did what he could to suppress a laugh, and when Harry turned to ask him, he raised a finger to quietly shush him. Bill then pointed down at Ron and Hermione, to where they were sitting on the sofa. Harry couldn't see what the problem was, Ron had leaned over to the armrest for support as he slept, while Hermione had rested her head on a cushion placed on Ron's shoulder.  
  
Bill mouthed silently something like 'Look at their feet.' Harry looked again, and noted only that they had both kicked off their shoes and Ron and Hermione were both resting comfortably in their socks.  
  
Harry sighed. As quietly as possible, he whispered, "Good night, Ron. Good night, Hermione."  
  
Bill shook his head, smiling, before he Disapparated, most likely off to see Fleur. Harry sighed again, and head for the stairwell. He tried to stifle a yawn, but after all, it had been a long and eventful night...  
  
Chapter Thirteen: Some Truths 


	13. Chapter Thirteen: Some Truths

Chapter Thirteen: Some Truths  
  
Harry's dream was extremely odd: he was standing on the shore of a purple ocean waiting for the Horned Ships to enter port so that the Corsair could do battle against the armies of Su'Teth. Then he realized he was borrowing the dream of some poor girl in the Orkney Islands who'd read a little too much Howard that week, so he traded it back for his regular dream about winning the Quidditch World Cup for England against a very tough Ruritania team.  
  
The next thing Harry knew was that Dobby was hopping up and down on his chest. At least, it felt like something Dobby would do. Harry groaned, opening his eyes, blinking as they were so out of focus, and reached for his glasses. "Argh, you shouldn't be here, Dobby, this isn't your house..."  
  
Dobby turned out to be a grinning, uncontrollable Ginny hopping up and down. "Harry! Thank God you're up now! Details! I want details!"  
  
"Nnnnaaagggguuuhhh," someone else in the room groaned, and Ron stirred from his bed on the other side of the small room, his red hair mangled from a rudely interrupted sleep. He mumbled something and tossed his pillow, harshly, at Ginny's head before collapsing back onto his mattress.  
  
"Too bad, you're going to need it back," Ginny growled at her older brother, tossing the pillow over to the far side of Ron's bedroom. It hit the poster of a Chudley Cannons player, Crystal Kent, who got knocked off her broom because she'd been too intent on listening in for details as well. "C'mon, Harry. Out with it! I've got fifty O-mail owls ready to go at a moment's notice!"  
  
Harry did his best to mimic Ron's groan of despair and fell back onto the bed. He kicked his legs, doing his best to move Ginny off of him.  
  
"I have vays of making you talk, Harry!..."  
  
Harry wriggled, seeing if he could slide off the bed somehow and hide under it.  
  
"Talk! Or I'll start tickling you!" Ginny was serious, Ron once warned she was a born tickler.  
  
"No tickling!" Harry shouted, and wriggled harder.  
  
The bedroom door, which had been left slightly ajar, opened wide as Hermione shuffled in. Her unkempt hair was even more so, and her eyes were barely open. "Ginny," she groaned, "For God's sake, it's been a long night, we need our sleep..."  
  
"But I want to know how it went last night," Ginny whined.  
  
"If you want to know how it went last night," Hermione paused to yawn for roughly fifty-one seconds, "go read the bloody newspaper. Now, out..."  
  
"Ohhhh," Ginny groaned, hopping off Harry's bed and glaring at Hermione as she passed her, "If you ever ask about how my dates went, I'll never tell you out of spite, I will..."  
  
"Save it for your wedding," Hermione growled back, then shrugged her shoulders at Harry once Ginny left. "Eh. Good night, Harry."  
  
Harry couldn't really close his eyes at the moment. "What did you just say about reading the newspapers to find out how it went???"  
  
"Good night, Harry," Hermione said a bit more forcefully.  
  
"But, Herm, it's morning..."  
  
"I said good night!" The door slammed.  
  
Harry glanced over to Ron's bed, thinking if he should say anything to his friend. Finally he whispered, "What is up with Hermione?"  
  
Ron rolled over to face him. "We'd...yawn...stayed up all night, Harry." Pause. "Studied all night...just got to bed maybe an hour ago..."  
  
"Yeah, I saw you when I came in last night..."  
  
Ron suddenly stirred and sat upright, fully awake. "What did you see, Harry?"  
  
Harry shrugged. "Uh, I saw you guys on the sofa, you had kicked off your shoes and stuff. Your schoolwork was everywhere..."  
  
"Who else saw us?" There was an edge of panic in Ron's voice.  
  
"What? Bill saw you. He laughed about seeing the two of you like that on the sofa, like as though he'd never saw you studying before..."  
  
"Oh God." Ron collapsed back onto his bed. "Harry, could you hand me my pillow back?" Once Harry handed it over, Ron shoved the pillow onto his face and apparently tried to suffocate himself with it.  
  
Harry couldn't really go back to sleep, so he rolled out of bed and found his pants. He had slept in his shirt and underwear, since he hadn't packed his pajamas for a sleepover, and knew he'd have to get back to 4 Privet Drive before his body odor caused any fatalities at the Burrow.  
  
Ginny waited for him on the stairwell. "Details, Harry! C'mon! Please! Okay, look, I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier, all right? So talk!"  
  
"No, Ginny, wait, I'll talk, and you don't have to apologize about it, okay?" Harry paused, then waved toward the living room. "Just a few minutes, okay?"  
  
Ginny squealed with glee and hurried to the living room. Shoving the haphazard pile of papers Ron and Hermione left from last night out of the way, she hopped up and down on the sofa. "Oh boy! Did you kiss?"  
  
"Ginny!" Harry took a seat in a recliner facing the sofa. "Yeah, we kissed."  
  
Ginny squealed even louder. Mrs. Weasley's voice shook from the kitchen. "Virginia! Keep the noise down!"  
  
Harry sighed and discussed what had happened, how the film was, that Luna asked a lot of questions during the movie, that the dinner at the French restaurant went well, that certain German beers should be avoided, and that, yes, Harry had kissed Luna good night at her doorstep. The details about the kiss Harry would not comment, merely that it happened.  
  
"Ooh, I'll have to ask Luna then just how it was," Ginny grinned wickedly before hopping off the sofa and running back up the stairs. Harry sighed and relaxed into the recliner. He knew he hadn't told her the whole night's events, especially the attempt by Voldemort to torment his mind and kill him. Ginny would have only appreciated the icky fun stuff.  
  
After a moment, Harry stood up and stumbled toward the kitchen, hoping if Mrs. Weasley could get him a bowl of porridge perhaps before he Floo back to Mrs. Figg's place in Little Whinging.  
  
And it was right there in the doorway when he noticed Albus Dumbledore sitting at the kitchen table, calmly drinking a cup of herbal tea with a half-finished cinnamon bun on his plate and the Daily Prophet half-opened in one of his hands. "Ah, good morning, Harry," Dumbledore nodded, placing the drink back down and folding up the paper.  
  
"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley was over at the oven, mitts on her hands, pulling out a large tray of cinnamon buns. "Oh, let me put these out of the way! Harry! Oh, I hope it went well for you last night!" She hurried over and wrapped him up in a big suffocating hug.  
  
"It does appear it went well for young Harry here, Molly. Do please be careful, he does need to breath, you know." Dumbledore looked at her over his glasses, lowered down his long nose, doing his patented eye twinkle bit.  
  
"Oh, of course! So sorry!" Mrs. Weasley let go, turning toward the oven. "Harry, do sit down! I've got buns ready! Anything for breakfast you like, Harry, I'll whip it up for you as best I can!"  
  
"The cinnamon buns will be fine for now, Molly." Dumbledore slid the newspaper away from him, but also away from Harry. "If you could, I would like a minute alone with Harry. We need to talk."  
  
Harry took a seat facing Dumbledore while Mrs. Weasley left the kitchen. The Hogwarts Headmaster took another bite of the bun he had been eating. "I'll have to see if I can get the recipe," he noted. "Pass it on to the kitchen staff when I return."  
  
"I take it that means we've got a kitchen still at Hogwarts," Harry replied.  
  
"Ah, yes. Nymphadora had let that slip, hadn't she? For an Auror," Dumbledore paused, then smiled, "her heart is in the right place. I do hope you weren't worried about the school during your entertainment last night."  
  
Harry sighed, thinking to thump his head onto the table. "It seems everyone knows about now, don't they?"  
  
"Mostly just the ones who care, Harry." Dumbledore handed over the newspaper. "Word had leaked to the reporters at the Prophet, but it took some doing on my part to convince them that they owed you a slight reprieve, considering the mudslinging they had done last year. And besides, there have been more important things happening right now."  
  
Harry glanced at the front page, which documented the battle last night at Hogwarts, pictures of the defeated assault squad of giants, and a vivid account detailing just how effective a Whomping Willow could be. "So the castle is safe?"  
  
"It is safe, and it always will be," came the answer.  
  
Harry glanced through the articles, seeking details, then shook his head. "You're probably here to check on me, aren't you?"  
  
"Yes." Dumbledore took a sip of his morning tea. "I received word about how things are going among the ranks of the Death Eaters. Voldemort ought to have avoided attacking you unless he was certain he had already won, at least against me. He was, and more than likely still is, unaware of the specifics of that prophecy..."  
  
"Even though he's got access to my mind?" Harry interrupted.  
  
"He may have access, Harry, but until last night he was very unwilling to go in there. For one thing, I am not certain Voldemort is aware of what you know, since you had been...uninformed about a lot of things until recently. He may not trust you as a source of information." Dumbledore sighed. "But above all, and I am certain of this, being a Legilimens myself. One cannot go about the memories and feelings of another person without being affected by those memories and feelings. You should have learned through your Occlumency that you gain an incredible perspective on the world from another person's vision, and sometimes those visions are something you don't want to see."  
  
Harry remembered the times he entered Snape's mind, and especially Mrs. Weasley's. "So Voldemort doesn't want to see what I see. But he's probably seen so much, hasn't he? What could he be so afraid of? What doesn't he want to see?"  
  
Dumbledore took a moment to come up with the most cryptic response he could think. "He does not wish to see those things he finds useless, or unwanted. He does not want to be reminded of those things that had hurt him when he was more like you are now. Emotions, and the memories we have tied to them, Harry, can be very powerful, for they dictate where we have been and where, in some cases, we do not want to go."  
  
"Then his attack on my mind, last night..."  
  
"He was only there to drive you to distraction, or worse, harm yourself. Which was why it was vitally important, when we learned he was working his way to doing this, that you needed to restart the Occlumency training as soon as possible." Dumbledore smiled a bit. "It was fortunate that Ron's mother was now available to assist, it was impossible during school year to bring her into it, Umbridge would have fought it tooth and nail. I believed you would have improved on your control if you worked with someone you could trust this time."  
  
Harry didn't want to snort in response, but considering the point brought up his disgust of Professor Snape, he did. He frowned quickly, knowing he shouldn't have done it in front of Dumbledore, but the Headmaster paid it no mind. Harry followed up with, "What if Voldemort had succeeded? In controlling my mind?"  
  
"We had...contingencies for that, Harry."  
  
"Luna?"  
  
Dumbledore tilted his head slightly. "Miss Lovegood? No. She had been warned, I was told, but she wasn't part of it."  
  
"You mean someone was watching me. Watching us."  
  
"No, certainly not." The aged wizard shook his head. "We had been working on a way to shield...well, it would have been an impressive display of magic, if I had determined it needed to be cast."  
  
"How could you determine that?" Harry rubbed his scar, which still lay dormant.  
  
"Remember, Harry, I had measured this once before, when you witnessed the attack on Arthur. The snakes I had conjured, remained divided. When they merge, that is when I fear...ah, what's the phrase? That all bets are off."  
  
"So I'm okay?"  
  
"That depends." A twinkle appeared in Dumbledore's eyes. "How did the date go?"  
  
Harry slid a bit into his chair and groaned. "Ask Ginny."  
  
Dumbledore smiled and sipped some more of his tea. Harry glanced at the paper again, reading some more about the giant attack at Hogwarts, the damage spillover to Hogsmeade (thankfully, the candy store had survived without a scratch). He thought back to the week before, when the Dementors attacked, that sad look on Neville's face. He knew now, what he had feared the last summer, that they were all now deep into a war, that the carnage was underway, and most likely the worst yet to come...  
  
"Was it like this before?" Harry whispered. "All this fighting, and monsters attacking? All the death and suffering?"  
  
"No." Dumbledore paused. "People died, yes. The last time, it was more terror and uncertainty, but nothing so blunt or direct. They are noticeably lacking the art of subtlety provided by Lucius Malfoy, from what we've gathered. What we're seeing now are tests of sorts, Death Eaters organizing and enacting their plots to demonstrate which would be the most effective lieutenant to Voldemort's command. The Dementors, the giants, all have been plots by Bellatrix, showing her viciousness obviously but also her lack of grace or intellect."  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead again, noting the lack of pain he'd usually feel when Voldemort would express disappointment in his followers. "If the connection was still working like before," he noted, "I'd probably be able to tell you if she was being punished for failing on both counts."  
  
"Well, I'd doubt that, Harry," the Headmaster chuckled. "She's a particular...favorite of Tom's, something he'd never admit to but also never act on. As of now, we're waiting for the next Death Eater to present his claim of Voldemort's champion."  
  
Harry looked right at Dumbledore when he asked this. "Is Snape vying for leadership of the Death Eaters?"  
  
"No. I have not asked him, nor do I think Voldemort will. He is far too valuable an agent between our camps that such a thing would not be risked."  
  
Harry stood. "But...between the two sides?... How can you be certain he's spying for you and not for the Death Eaters?"  
  
Dumbledore waved his hands downward, trying to get Harry to sit. "I can trust Snape is doing his job, and doing it well."  
  
"How can you?" Harry remained standing. "He knows Occlumency! He could be hiding things from you like he's supposed to be hiding them from Voldemort! How can you be certain???"  
  
"Because I am certain he is spying for both of us."  
  
Harry sat, stunned, shocked. "But that means he's working for them! The bad guys!"  
  
"Yes, but Snape is still working for us. Harry, please give me a moment to explain." Dumbledore took a sip of his tea. "I am not alarmed nor surprised if Snape is providing valuable information to the other side. He does, after all, need to provide Voldemort with information to prove his usefulness. Just as long as we are aware of what information is going over, and that certain...believable half-truths are mixed in, we can control the potential damage, and stay one step ahead of the forces aligned against us."  
  
"Wouldn't Voldemort know this?"  
  
"I would think so, Harry. He's much too smart not to. Snape is still far too valuable a resource to ignore, for either of us. And there is a sort of comfort knowing this, that there is a balance of sorts here at work. There's a truth of warfare, unfortunately, that your enemy will always have a way of knowing things. At least this way, the source is known and respected."   
  
"But, still," Harry muttered, shaking his head. "How can you be absolutely sure Snape won't betray you?"  
  
"Because I trust him." Dumbledore nodded slowly. "There are some who would think that is a weakness, and I would understand why they would think so. But that, in all respects, is my nature. I trust Snape, as much as I trust you Harry, as much as I trust Hagrid, and McGonagall, and yes even the Dursleys."  
  
Harry kept shaking his head. "How can you, how can you trust so many people?"  
  
"Ah, a few reasons. Mostly because I do a very good job maintaining their trust in me." An odd twittering noise came from Dumbledore's robes, and he reached up a sleeve to pull out a small, watch-like device that had three wings flittering against each other. "I must go, Harry. Sturgis Podmore is reporting on the giants, one of them must have woken up. Thethalogol, most likely, his hide's about as thick and his grandfather's was. At least I'm hoping he's like his grandfather, he was a most reasonable fellow..."   
  
"Um, Headmaster?" Harry spoke up as Dumbledore stood to leave. "I just...I want to thank you, for working on the Latitalisman, and well, all the protection you've done for me and...stuff..."  
  
"Not all of the protection is my doing, Harry. You should thank the others, especially Lupin and Tonks. And besides, I should be thanking you."  
  
Harry scowled, puzzled. "Why?"  
  
Dumbledore nodded and smiled. "For actually going out and enjoying your life like you should. I had been...so concerned about keeping you safe, that I had forgotten that you are still young, and that...well, you are learning. Which is my job as your teacher, that you learn, and learn well."  
  
Harry was sorely tempted to ask Dumbledore if he could teach him what he knew about girls. But somehow Harry knew that sort of lesson would take a full school year, and Dumbledore was pressed for time. Instead, Harry mentioned something else. "I ought to at least apologize. About my behavior. About Sirius."  
  
"I deserved some of that rage, Harry, I had told you that already. There's no need to apologize." Dumbledore reached the front door of the Burrow. "I will see you soon, Harry. Say hello to Luna for me when she gets here."  
  
He picked up a cracked frog-shaped pot sitting at the corner of the doorstep, which apparently had been converted into a Portkey as the Headmaster whisked off to wherever he was going. Which seemed odd, unless he had gotten in the habit of using Portkeys instead of Apparating. Harry stepped to the doorway, since Dumbledore had left it open. But as he reached the door he realized why Dumbledore knew Luna would be showing up, as she was just there in the distance walking down the path.  
  
Harry closed the door behind him and walked the path toward her. "Hello, Luna Lovegood."  
  
Her dreamy voice sounded warm and fresh. "Hello, Harry Potter."  
  
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "Ginny's back inside, all giddy about what happened. She's most keen on seeing you, I'd bet."  
  
"I suppose." Luna glanced over his shoulder, nodding just slightly. "She'd want to know if we kissed or not. Did you tell her?"  
  
Harry nodded cautiously. "Was it alright that I did?"  
  
"Well, it happened. Was it alright that we did kiss?"  
  
Harry blushed, looking away smiling. "Yeah. It was...I liked it. I liked kissing you."  
  
Luna didn't blush, and she didn't look away for once, but she still smiled. "I liked kissing you, too."  
  
They stood there for a handful of moments, things getting awkward again for anything to be said. Finally, Luna glanced back over Harry's shoulder. "I guess Ginny wants a full report, then."  
  
"Luna. Wait. Before you go in, I just...I just want to ask you something."  
  
Luna's expression wavered just a bit. "What is the question, Harry?"  
  
Harry stopped smiling, a stern expression crossing his face. "Last week. Why did you lie?"  
  
Chapter Fourteen: The Owls Have It Figured 


	14. Chapter Fourteen: The Owls Have It Figur...

Chapter Fourteen: The Owls Have It Figured  
  
The accusation Harry laid out there created a long, unsettling silence. Finally, Luna sighed and stared right at him. "Which lie are you asking about, Harry? There were a couple..."  
  
He blinked twice. "Well, I was kinda viewing it as one big lie, but, if you want to get down to the specifics..."  
  
She frowned for a second. "When did you first figure it out, that I lied that day?"  
  
"It took me some time, actually. I had some suspicions, like I was being set up." Harry took a deep breath. "But when I knew for certain, it was when I found out there's no such thing as a Winodyr."  
  
"If you had asked Hermione," Luna noted, aligning her nose just to the right of Harry, "she does have a hard time believing there's even such a thing as a Crumple-Horned Snorkack..."  
  
"No. I asked Hagrid. Because he told me the Snorkacks are real, then I figured he'd know about Winodyrs too. He'd never heard of them. Snorkacks, yeah. Even nargles, he's known about them too. But the fact Winodyrs don't exist...that clinched it."  
  
Luna sighed like she was a deflating balloon. "I didn't have time to find a creature that was real..."  
  
"Why did you make them up?"  
  
"Because Tonks told me about the Latitalisman." Luna looked right at Harry. "She told me and Ginny about it. That they were going to give you a chance to leave that house you call a prison. She was worried you weren't going to have anyone walk with you, that you'd go alone." She frowned. "It's never fun to go alone. Anywhere."  
  
"She told you?"  
  
"Tonks knew. That we were friends, since we were there at the Department of Mysteries. Ron and Hermione were going off to France, so they couldn't join you. She wanted to know if you had a girlfriend, or a friend, to go visit. Ginny gave it some thought, but she likes Dean. And I volunteered, as long as I could get to where you would be by Floo Powder."  
  
Harry nodded. "That's why Tonks told me to go to Guildford. It was a little out of the way. And you seemed to know your way around Guildford too. And there was something else..."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"When you told me goblins had a controlling interest in food courts everywhere. Then I realized there'd have been Gringotts ATCMs even at the malls closest to Little Whinging, because they'd need their bank services close by as well..."  
  
Luna nodded. "Good one, Harry."  
  
"And I had been wondering why we hadn't found your father, and why you weren't as concerned in finding him..."  
  
"But I did say that to that Auror, that we needed to find him..."  
  
Harry arched an eyebrow. "But that was a lie, wasn't it? Your father wasn't really there, was he?"  
  
"No, he wasn't." She sighed. "Dad didn't even know I'd gone that day. Thought I was with Ginny." Luna frowned, worried. "You won't tell him, will you? He was really concerned about what had happened that day, all the terrible things the Dementors were doing everywhere. He worries a little too much about me, sometimes."  
  
"Wasn't he worried about you going on the date?"  
  
"No." Luna smiled. "He trusts you. You're the Boy Who Lived. He's got faith you would have protected me if anything bad happened..."  
  
They both fell silent for a few minutes. Harry added, "There was one other thing. During the date, actually."  
  
"What was that?" Luna whispered.  
  
"Well, like the fact you know about the Ramones. If you knew about them, then I wondered how much else you knew about Muggle pop culture. You've had to have seen movies before, haven't you?"  
  
Luna smiled, an almost guilty expression. "I have to declare that 'Rock 'n Roll High School' is the greatest movie of all time."  
  
Harry chuckled, then stopped, frowning some more. "You set it all up. You and Ginny and Tonks. Sent me to Guildford, walked me by the cinema, Ginny's constant pressure, all of that."  
  
"Yes. Mostly." Luna sighed, head lowered. "Except for the stuff Ginny kept doing, I didn't ask for that. I didn't even know half of those girls at the makeover party. Some of them are even the ones who take my possessions at year's end. Ginny just went...well, crazy about getting the date perfect for you. And I can recognize crazy behavior, Harry, you know that..."  
  
"And the whole way you behaved and acted during the date, during the movie," Harry added, his voice choking ever so slightly. "You pretended not to know, and then you fell on me..."  
  
"That was real," Luna answered, glancing up, her silvery gray eyes locking onto Harry's. "I didn't mean to lose my balance and I did. I was worried I'd hurt you."  
  
They fell silent again. Then, Harry glared at her. "Why did you lie? Why did you have to do that?"  
  
"I wasn't trying to be devious." Luna glanced down again. "I was trying to be clever."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you'd have said 'No.'"  
  
Harry took a step closer. "Why would you think I'd do that?"  
  
"Because you did before. During the Yule Ball. All those girls went up and asked you, after making sure Hermione wasn't your date, that is. I was there when you turned down that one tall girl, and she was threatening to really hurt you if you had said no, I was amazed she never followed through on that. I couldn't ask you then..."  
  
"Oh. All of that," Harry sighed, lowering his head. "Luna, the reason I turned all those girls down was because I was still working up my nerve to ask Cho out. It wasn't because I didn't like any of you, well, there was a Slytherin girl in the mix somewhere, there was no way I was going to go with her."  
  
"Oh, I heard about that," Luna answered. "She was really doing it because she lost a bet. But Harry, I came to believe it was because you didn't like girls asking you."  
  
"That's not how I am, Luna." Harry took another step closer. "I...I'm not too sure how I would have reacted if you asked. But at least it would have been more honest..."  
  
"And I knew a bit that you fancied Cho, but Ginny told me when Tonks told us about your talisman, you had broken up with her. But I remembered too, about that Christmas training last year," Luna blinked once, glancing away before lowering her head a bit more. "The way you reacted being under the mistletoe. I was going to kiss you, but you jumped away. That made me so upset, so I mentioned the nargles that live in mistletoe, just so you wouldn't notice how hurt I was."  
  
Harry heard something from Luna, something he hadn't heard from her before. She was crying, just ever so, a slight tear running down her cheek and worry lines all over her face. She tried lowering her head more, to let her hair hide what she was going through. "I suppose, I suppose you don't think well of me now," she whispered. "That I lied about everything and all..."  
  
She hadn't noticed that Harry was close enough now to hug her, which he did, startling her enough to raise her head so they were face-to-face, and she could look into Harry's green eyes and didn't see any sign of anger. "What makes you say that?" Harry whispered. "I still went through with the date, didn't I?"  
  
Luna didn't answer, just kept staring into eyes.  
  
"Just answer me truthfully, Luna..."  
  
"...Yes?..."  
  
"Did you lie about you liking it when we kissed?"  
  
"No." Her voice felt so breathless. "That was the truth."  
  
And then Harry leaned his head down ever so slightly and kissed her on the cheek where her tear was, tasting it on the edge of his lips. Then he leaned his head back, and waited.  
  
Luna took a moment to smile that warm smile of hers, and turned her head to one side, pressing her ear against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist. They stood like that for a time that Harry didn't measure, and didn't care to.  
  
"Luna," he finally whispered, "can you promise me you'll never lie to me again, will you?"  
  
Luna sighed, sliding her head up, craning her neck so they could see each other. "Sorry, Harry. I'm too smart to know I can never promise anything like that." She smiled. "All I can promise, Harry, is that I will never hurt you."  
  
"I promise I won't hurt you either," Harry answered.  
  
"Good enough for now," she sighed, then leaned over to look past Harry. "Would it be alright if I said hello now to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley?"  
  
Harry let go of Luna to swing about, and realized that the Weasley parents were standing there, both grinning, at the kitchen window. He spotted some movement from the upper windows and saw Ron and Hermione both leaning out of Ron's window with big grins on them as well.  
  
"Oh, hey, Harry, don't mind us!" Ron shouted. "We'd just sent a note to Colin Creevey, see if he can get his camera over here, can you wait for a few minutes?!"  
  
"Ron, don't say that!" Hermione pushed him, but gently, knowing the situation. "We're happy for you Harry, don't feel embarrassed!"  
  
"It's all the yelling that's embarrassing," Harry muttered under his breath.  
  
"Perhaps we should move closer then, so they won't have to yell," Luna answered. Together, arms wrapped around each other, they walked toward the Weasley abode.  
  
As they got closer, they saw Ginny swing the front door open as swiftly as possible. "What?! Did I miss something??? NO! I missed it!"  
  
"You didn't miss much," Ron shouted down to her. "Just them hugging and...what's that word, Hermione?"  
  
"Snogging, Ron, honestly, haven't you looked through that dictionary ever?"  
  
"Augh! They kissed!" Ginny kicked the ground. "Dammit!"  
  
"Virginia!"  
  
"Sorry, mum, but seriously, I missed it!..."  
  
Harry sighed. "Ready for breakfast?"  
  
"Already ate some fruit at home," Luna answered dreamily, "but I'd be thrilled to have a cinnamon bun if they've got any in the oven..."  
  
The return back to 4 Privet Drive went well. Harry finally came out of the Floo Network into Mrs. Figg's living room without a hitch. Shaking off the soot from his clothes, he glanced over to the sofa, where only one cat, a skittish Calico named Tehya, sat with wide terrified eyes.  
  
"Oh, lighten up," Harry smiled at the cat. "Life is good."  
  
The other cats had been on patrol, Mrs. Figg's orders, partly because she was worried "that old meanie You-Know-Who" might try something soon, which Harry didn't feel was going to happen, at least not for this weekend. Mrs. Figg also wanted to keep an eye out for "that young meanie" Aunt Petunia, who was on the prowl for a rather dangerous Ford Anglia.  
  
Speaking of the Anglia, Hagrid had shown up as breakfast was served, ready to take the car back to the Forbidden Forest. Arthur Weasley couldn't really keep it, being a rather illegal magical piece of altered Muggle engineering, and it had nowhere else to go, really, where it could feel at home.  
  
"Don't feel too bad abert it," Hagrid smiled, "I've be'n thinkin' Grawp might like a pet of 'is own anywho."  
  
Harry swore it was the first time he'd ever seen a car shudder in fear.  
  
Harry walked back with a five-cat escort, which he shooed away before getting too close, making sure Aunt Petunia didn't connect the clues and realize a cat lover like Mrs. Figg was the undercover spy. Dudley was on the front lawn arguing with Piers for the first time Harry had ever seen, apparently about someone that Piers disagreed with but whom Dudley "fancied too much." They both glowered at Harry, but he didn't care.  
  
The reception indoors went as well as Harry expected. Uncle Vernon accused Harry of being out getting drunk all night with his 'twisted' friends, and that nine months from now that "thin waif of a twit will be at the door with another bloody mouth to feed." Aunt Petunia wailed a lot about catching Harry in his bedroom with a girl, which also set off Uncle Vernon to give more threats of more long-winded lectures. Harry didn't notice much of that, either.  
  
Harry spent most of Saturday afternoon catching up on some more schoolwork, figuring Hermione was bound to send owl post insisting he keep up with her and Ron. Indeed, just before supper time (which for Dursleys was six o'clock proper and Harry usually whenever table scraps were left behind) an owl tapped on the window. However, it was an owl Harry had never seen before.  
  
He was half the size of Hedwig, a dark coal-color coat with white spots on the wings. He fluttered onto Harry's desk, hooted something that sounded like "wood," then lifted his leg to reveal the note. Harry removed it, opening it to find Luna's handwriting:  
  
Harry Potter:  
  
The Boreal owl before you is named Zenger. He works for my father as our house owl. If you ever see a long-eared owl delivering my notes, that will be Bly, she'll be from the Quibbler office.  
  
I just wanted to tell you that we're going to Sweden tomorrow...  
  
Harry stopped reading the note for a moment. He watched Zenger and Hedwig bob and weave at each other, wondering if this was a way owls greeted each other. He continued reading:  
  
...Dad had just gotten confirmation on where we're going, and a good-sized staff to go with us. The Rare Creatures expert from that country had to finish off a lot of paperwork, and just gave us short notice that we needed to go now. We won't have much time to work before the Crumple-Horned Snorkack retreat to where wizards can't go. One of the beauties of the creature, Harry, how it travels, how it lives. It will be remarkable to actually see them, even one if we can!  
  
Please write often. Ginny is insisting I write letters every day, and that you do as well. But I am patient. I can wait a week between letters. Ginny is also wondering why I'm not drawing heart shapes everywhere. But I'm not the artist that she is.  
  
It would be nice to bring you with us, but companionship for the expedition is limited due to environment preservation rules. Plus, Mrs. Weasley said you couldn't go because 'home is home' for you, whatever that means.  
  
I would like to say 'Love you' about fifty times right now, but that would be silly. I'll just do it five times, for now. Love you.  
  
Love you.  
  
Love you  
  
Love you.  
  
Love you.  
  
Signed,   
  
Luna Lovegood  
  
Ravenclaw  
  
P.S. Why not? One more Love you  
  
Harry smiled, placed the letter flat on the desk, and pressed his forehead against the paper. He lifted his head, found himself a clean sheet of scroll paper, and started writing.  
  
Dear Luna:  
  
Sweden should be fun for you and your father. Wish him well for me.  
  
I'm sending Hedwig to find you, so it'll be fair for her to figure out how best to find you when I send you letters. Hope Zenger won't mind.  
  
I would like to see you again very soon. Please tell me when you'll get back.  
  
I love you. There. I wrote it. I'll be writing it a lot more often too, just have to make sure I don't write it in my homework. If Snape sees anything like that in my Potions notes, he'll expel me for certain.  
  
I love you. I can write that in Latin as well. Amo te. Or maybe Te amo. No, it's the second one, the verb concludes everything in Latin. Te amo, Luna.  
  
I will write you before next week. Promise.  
  
Signed,  
  
Harry Potter  
  
Boyfriend  
  
P.S. I need to learn 'Love you' in Elvish, just to be fancy about it.  
  
Harry smiled, folding the letter and then opening Hedwig's cage. "Hey, I don't know if you can find her, but the person getting this letter is Luna Lovegood."  
  
The snowy owl hooted at Harry, slightly offended that he wouldn't trust her ability to find anyone, anywhere, to deliver the message. She lifted her leg to receive the note, then pecked playfully at Harry's thumb once he secured it. Zenger hopped to the end of the table and flapped over to the window ledge, waiting perhaps to escort Hedwig into whichever direction led straight to Luna.  
  
"So you know your way?"  
  
Hedwig clicked-clacked at Harry, as if to say 'I always know my way,' before flapping over to sit next to Zenger. They hopped up and down a bit more, as an owl dance of sorts, before Zenger flapped his wings and flitted into the late sunset sky. Hedwig quickly followed, and the two owls skirted the rooftops of the surrounding houses before heading north.  
  
Harry sighed, went back to work on his schoolwork, and hummed that piano tune he had heard last night. He didn't notice the big grin on his face that seemed to stay there well into the night when he went to sleep. All he really noticed, in some respects, was that this was the happiest he had been in years.  
  
Just as long as he got an owl post back within a week, that is.  
  
THIS CONCLUDES 'HARRY POTTER AND THE AWKWARD DATE'  
  
THANKS AND RECOGNITIONS  
  
There's a handful of people who helped a lot in getting this story completed.  
  
As always, many thanks to J.K. Rowling for doing such an excellent job of writing an enjoyable, readable series of fantasy books, with additional thanks to her publishers and solicitors for not hunting me down with a BFD (Big Effing Dragon).  
  
Also a big note of thanks to the director and producers of the movie 'Empire Records' for not noticing that I've used their movie as a backdrop to the goings-on in this story. Director is Allan Moyle; Producers are Paul Kurta, Tony Ludwig, Arnon Milchan, Michael Mathanson, and Alan Riche; Screenwriter is Carol Heikkinen.   
  
Now, a big mention to Dave305 and Rashaka on Fanfiction.net, who both emailed me at roughly the same time asking why I hadn't finished Chapter 5 at some point. What had happened was a severe case of writer's block had hit me: I was stuck on how to describe exactly how Snape and Uncle Vernon would confront each other. So I was stuck there...for about three months? Maybe four. When Dave and Rashaka emailed me to hurry along, it gave me impetus to just get done with it. I still think the confrontation could have gone better, but still, it allowed me to get over that hump and finish up the story. Many thanks to Dave305 and Rashaka (insert genuflecting here)!!!  
  
Dave305 has also been helpful in checking grammar and plot errors, such as pointing out owls don't eat seed, that Bagman was indebted to the twins not the other way around, that Voldemort should be You-Know-Who at all times, and that mentioning the Ramones is always a good thing.  
  
Rashaka had also been valuable in introducing me to Fiction Alley, where I made contact with other HP fanfic writers, and was able to ask for volunteers to submit OC (original characters) for the makeover party sequence in Chapter 8.  
  
Also a quick shout-out to Nyermen, whom it turns out is familiar with the car parks in Guildford and that the bottom levels always flood out.  
  
As for the Fiction Alley cast and crew, I mentioned them at the end of Chapter 8 but would like to do so again.  
  
Polaris provided Dorothy Stilesmore, Hufflepuff.  
  
Kjrsten provided Madeleine Vance, Ravenclaw.  
  
KittenOfDoom provided Alyssa Myers, Slytherin.   
  
Wildmage provided Chris(tina), Gryffindor.  
  
Miss Kitty provided Kari Tsukino, Gryffindor.  
  
Detailed authors' notes were removed by suggestion from a fellow submitting fanfiction.net writer. If anyone wants to read it, hopefully I can send a private file copy to you via O-mail. Send an owl to me at wittylibrarian@lycos.com for a copy.  
  
COMING SOON:  
  
'Dolores Umbridge Versus the Crimson Permanent Assurance'  
  
(just kidding) 


End file.
